New York Foster Care

A Medical Guide for Youth in Foster Care

2011-12-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

A Medical Guide for Youth in Foster Care
New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services has released a 28-page booklet to guide youth in care through the health care system. The booklet covers informed consent, rights to privacy and to refuse medication, and information about how to get and pay for medical care. (2011)

http://www.youthsuccessnyc.org/PDF/2011_medical_guide_for_foster_youth.pdf

Overmedication of Foster Youth - and Yes, the Drug Companies Are Making Money

2011-11-29T16:00:00.000-08:00

Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care

Carey, Benedict. New York Times, Nov. 20, 2011

Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.

The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.
“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author.

The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.

In recent years, doctors and policy makers have grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications at about twice the rate among children outside the system.

The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, antipsychotics. It found that about 2 percent of foster children took at least one such drug, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drugs are approved, are extremely rare in young children.

“It’s a significant and important finding, and it should prompt states to improve the quality of care in this area,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who did not contribute to the research.

In the study, mental health researchers analyzed 2003 Medicaid records of 637,924 minors from an unidentified mid-Atlantic state who were either in foster care, getting disability benefits for a diagnosis like severe autism or bipolar disorder, or in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All of these programs draw on Medicaid financing. The investigators found that 16,969, or about 3 percent of the total, had received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic drug.

Yet among these, it was the foster children who most often got more than one such prescription at the same time: 9.2 percent, versus 6.8 percent among the children on disability, and just 2.5 percent of those in the needy families program.

Antipsychotic drugs, the authors said, also cause rapid weight gain and increase the risk for metabolic problems in many people, an effect that may be amplified by the use of two at once.

Doctors who treat such children are aware of the trade-offs and often prescribe lower doses of the medications as a result. And when they add a second such drug, it is often to counteract side effects of the first medication.

Still, the relatively high rates of these drug combinations in such a young and vulnerable group have prompted policy makers across the country to take notice. A consortium of 16 states, in collaboration with Rutgers University, has drawn up guidelines to improve care for foster children and others dependent on state aid.

“The psychiatrists who are treating these kids on the front lines are not doing it for money; there are very low reimbursement rates from Medicaid,” said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, a mental health services researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. “There’s enormous anguish because everyone knows that this is not what we should be doing for these kids. We as a society simply haven’t made the investment in psychosocial treatments, and so we are forced to rely on psychotropic drugs to carry the burden.”

One-fourth of New York City foster youth age out immediately into homelessness

2011-10-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

A Deal to Help Foster Youths Find Housing

Secret, Mosi. New York Times, October 20, 2011

New York City has reached an agreement on a proposed settlement of a lawsuit that claims the city allows older children to leave foster care only to become immediately homeless.

Each year, roughly 800 to 1,100 people age 18 to 21 are discharged from foster care to fend for themselves, the plaintiffs complained in the class-action suit.

There is no current data on the youths’ housing after foster care, but previously the city’s Department of Homeless Services and the City Council estimated that more than a quarter of youths discharged from foster care because of their age end up homeless almost immediately, according to the complaint, which accuses the city of shirking its responsibilities to those youths.

The city is required by state law to supervise and assist in providing housing for people who have left foster care until they reach age 21.

The accord calls for the city to maintain a unit in the Administration for Children’s Services for those people, initiate training for foster care agencies, revamp its procedures for helping youths find stable housing and improve their access to services.

The agreement is the product of two years of negotiations among the Administration for Children’s Services, the Legal Aid Society and the advocacy group Lawyers for Children. The parties said they had agreed to settle to avoid protracted litigation, and they actually reached the agreement before the lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers filed the suit to provide for court enforcement if problems develop down the road, said Pat Bath, the spokeswoman for Legal Aid. A judge has to approve the settlement before it goes into effect.

The four lead plaintiffs remain anonymous. Three are 21 years old and at risk of being homeless at discharge because they do not have stable housing lined up, according to the complaint. One is 20, has already been discharged and is at risk of becoming homeless, the complaint says.

“An alarming number of young people are being discharged from foster care into homelessness,” Tamara Steckler, the lawyer in charge of the juvenile rights practice at the Legal Aid Society, said in a written statement.

Ronald E. Richter, the commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, said in a written statement, “We are committed to helping young people leaving foster care achieve successful adulthood, which includes appropriate stable housing.”

Under the accord, the children’s services agency will develop permanent housing plans for youths living in foster care. It will work with foster care agencies to create the plans in time to find adequate housing. The city and the agencies will monitor the young adults discharged under the plans until they turn 21.

Children’s Services will also track and monitor data on their housing until they turn 21.

Also, a new unit in Children’s Services will oversee the foster care agencies’ adherence to the new requirements.

New York foster youth "aging out" into homelessness

2011-10-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

Deal reached to help older foster care children

Associated Press, October 21, 2011

NEW YORK — New York City has reached an agreement on a proposed settlement of a lawsuit that claimed it allowed foster care children to fall into homelessness after leaving the system at age 18.

The lawsuit said the Administration for Children's Services failed to abide by state laws that mandate children be prepared for independent living when they leave foster care.

The agreement calls on the ACS to maintain a special unit for children who turn 18. It also calls on the ACS to initiate training for foster care agencies, update its procedures for helping youths find stable housing and improve their access to services.

The agreement was reached after two years of negotiations among the ACS, the Legal Aid Society and the advocacy group Lawyers for Children.

"Aging Out" of foster care - and into a harsh, new world

2011-10-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

The "Aging Out" Dilemma Plaguing the Foster Care System
Baccaglini, Bill. Executive Director of the New York Foundling.
Huffington Post, September 25, 2011.

Imagine that because you've been abused or neglected as a child, you've spent the first 21 years of your life separated from your biological family, bouncing from one foster home to another and changing schools every few years. At 21-years-old, you have never paid rent, bought your own groceries or managed your own expenses.

With an education that's spotty at best, and no family or other support systems in place, you're told that you're now an adult and responsible for functioning in the world on your own. Would you be able to do it?

That is precisely the situation facing many young adults who age out of our child welfare system. And while outgoing ACS Commissioner Mattingly did a tremendous job on many fronts, he would probably agree that the "aging out" population is one that still requires urgent attention. As new Commissioner Richter takes over the agency, this would be an excellent time to take a fresh look at how we serve - or fail - these young people.

While local statistics are hard to come by for a population no longer under the city's care, nationally, one in four of the 20,000 foster care youth who age out of the child welfare system each year are incarcerated within two years; one in five become homeless, only half graduate from high school. With more than 900 young people aging out in New York each year, these numbers reflect a real problem.

Under the current system, when young people in foster care turn 21, they have the rug pulled out from under them.

They must sink or swim. But if they sink, we all pay a price. Unable to manage on their own, with none of the support systems in place that we all take for granted, all too often, they end up homeless, or turn to drugs and crime - all of which take a toll on government budgets and the quality of life in our communities.

Because of their life experiences some kids need more support than others - and they may need it for longer. A 21-year-old who has lived most of his life in either the child welfare system or a dysfunctional family setting is not at the same level emotionally or cognitively as other 21-year-olds. And as every parent knows, you can't set an arbitrary schedule for maturity.

As nervous as we may be to send our own children away to college, for example, we recognize that we could not have gotten them more ready simply by training them better or earlier. Most of the kids we're talking about are not going away to college; they may not have graduated high school. There are no teachers or mentors or parents they can call when run out of money or get into trouble. They're on their own and, for many of them, 21 is simply not old enough. And no amount of training or better programming by the child welfare system could have hastened their readiness. Because of their many pressing needs and challenges, they have not been the beneficiaries of structured or guided exposure to life experiences that naturally facilitates the maturation process.

What's the solution? First, we need more and better programs to prepare these kids for life on their own. Once they are on their own, they are likely to still need help with housing, jobs and enrolling in some form of academic or vocational higher education. They may also need social work or mental health assistance to deal with issues like parents coming out of prison or siblings with drug problems. For those kids, providing this kind of support until age 23 could mean the difference between a productive life and a life in the corrections system or a homeless shelter. These age appropriate programs that work beyond the system are a very good investment indeed.

At the same time, we need to make it clear that this support for young adults is temporary, and that the recipient must ultimately bear responsibility for his or her own success. These young people must stay enrolled in school and hold a job, even if part time. There must be high expectations, no free rides, and a path toward independence in a relatively short term.

For Hispanic youngsters today, we're seeing particular challenges, at least partly due to changing immigration trends. Many young immigrants, coming here from a variety of countries, do not have the generational, family and community support that has existed for previous immigrant groups. Whatever extended family they may have to fall back on may already be stretched thin. Combine lack of family with language barrier and overall cultural differences, and that child is at even greater risk.

Critics may argue that at some point we need to stop supporting these kids and cut them loose, and that 21 seems like a logical age. After all, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on each of these kids up until that point - When is enough enough? If release from the child welfare system is no more than a path toward a homeless shelter or a jail cell, what have we accomplished? If by creating short term programs to teach the necessary skills prior to turning 21 and by providing some additional support for a limited period of time afterwards, we can put that young adult on the path to a successful productive life. Isn't that worth it?

Aging out of NY foster care system into homelessness

2011-09-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Many Foster Children End Up Homeless: Report

Flanagan, Jenna. WNCY, September 8, 2011.

New York is not doing a good job preparing its foster children for the workforce, charges a new report.

The report from the Center for an Urban Future found that one in 10 youths in New York City who left foster care in the mid-2000s entered a homeless shelter within a year. Within three years, that number doubled to one in five.

"These young people go from being official wards of the state as part of the foster care system to adult wards of the state," said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the center.

The report showed that as many as half of the roughly 1,000 young people who aged out of the city’s foster care system failed to obtain and hold onto jobs.

Bowles said many foster care agencies are failing foster kids due to their scant connections with employers.

"We're at a time now when skills and higher education are becoming more important than ever and so many of these young people are being further and further behind," Bowles said.

Bowles has called on incoming commissioner Ronald Richter to focus on strengthening workforce readiness for young adults leaving foster care in the city.

Overcoming Hurdles to Employment for NY Foster Youth

2011-09-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Job Hurdle After Foster Care.
De Avila, Joseph. Wall Street Journal, Sept. 6, 2011.

Even as the unemployment rate for New York City teens remains stubbornly high, a new report finds one group of young people faces especially tough odds: the city's foster children.

Only about half the young adults who leave the city's foster system are able to find work, estimates the report that examines joblessness among current and former foster children. Young people still in the system also struggle more than their peers to find jobs, the report by the Center for an Urban Future found.

"There is a lack of both a preparatory system that simulates and substitutes for what kids get from their parents and a lack of a safety net for young adults going out in the work force," said Tom Hilliard, the report's author.

Cordale Manning, 19, spoke to a manager at Champs Sports in Times Square who told him to submit an online application. Mr. Manning was 12 when he and his older brother were placed into foster care. Since then, he has lived in five different homes.

Prior to the recession, the unemployment rate for all teens in New York City between the ages of 16 and 19 was just under 20%, according to the report by the Manhattan-based think tank. By the end of 2010, that rate shot up to 40%.

Neither the city nor foster-care agencies track how many teens and young adults in the system find employment, Mr. Hilliard said. But his research among foster-care professionals in New York appears to show that about half the 1,000 young people who age out of the system every year, typically at age 21, find jobs.

As of 2010, there were about 16,000 children in the city's foster system, and about 2,000 of them were older than 18, according to the report.

The report comes amid a $127 million initiative launched by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to aid Latino and black men between the ages of 16 and 24. The three-year program will include mentoring and literacy services and efforts to boost employment.

Cordale Manning, 19 years old, said he thought having a stable foster home in the South Bronx instead of bouncing from home to home would help him hold onto a job. Instead, he was laid off earlier this year after two months stocking groceries at a Manhattan store.

Mr. Manning was 12 when he and his older brother were placed into foster care. Since then, he has lived in five different homes.

After losing his job, he's applied to about 10 retail positions and hasn't been called for any interviews.

"When I turn 21, I'm worried about if I'm going to be able to hold my own," Mr. Manning said. He's enrolled in vocational school learning how to repair computers. "I'm really kind of anxious about it because I don't know what's going to happen."

Mr. Hilliard said even children with stable foster homes often have missed out on the years of financial, educational and familial support that readies a young person for a working life and can shore them up during their first unsteady attempts.

He said the city Administration for Children's Services, which manages most aspects of the child welfare system in New York City, has spent much of its efforts in recent years on family reunification and preventive services, he said.

Mr. Hilliard called that mission vital but said older foster children are no longer a top priority of the agency. He pointed to the agency's elimination of the Office of Youth Development in 2008, which worked mainly with older foster children to help them ease into independent life.

"ACS will continue to collaborate with the public and private sectors to make stable employment a reality for our young people," said an ACS spokeswoman in a written statement. "Through the Mayor's Young Men's Initiative, for example, the city is expanding evidence-based employment programs...These programs have been successful in helping young people, particularly those with limited or no work experience, connect to work and increase their earnings."

The economic downturn has made employment in New York increasingly competitive for young people who rely on retail and food service jobs, said Courtney Hawkins of F.E.G.S. Health and Human Services Systems, which runs a program that prepares foster youths for the work force. Many of those jobs now require high-school diplomas or GEDs, while many of the working-age youths whom her group assists have fifth-grade reading levels, she said.

"You end up seeing 20- and 21-year-olds who have never had a job before," Ms. Hawkins said.

Emotional problems and anger issues that affect some foster children mean they end up getting fired once they do become employed, said Jane Golden of the Children's Aid Society, which provides foster care and other services.

"There is no quick fix for fractured relationship-building skills," Ms. Golden said. "It's a long haul."

Marcia Wilson, 21, recently aged out of the foster care system and credits her good attitude for the success she's had.

"Every teen that I've known, they had jobs," Ms. Wilson said. "It's a matter of keeping the jobs before you age out of care."

Ms. Wilson says she has had influential social workers who have helped her along the way. She also wants to be a good role model for her younger brothers who are 19 and 18. Neither have jobs, but both are still in high school, she said.

Later this month, Ms. Wilson will start a six-month fellowship working at an investment bank. She also recently got her own apartment in Harlem and is enrolled in community college and wants to get a degree in political science.

Kevin Peterson, 20, of Staten Island, is preparing to move out on his own in January, when he turns 21. He has an apartment lined up through the New York City Housing Authority but worries about finding a job. Earlier this year, he was fired from a pet store where he worked for three months after he says he mistakenly stocked a product that had expired.

"I always had a dream of having a job that I can stick with," said Mr. Peterson, who has been in foster care since he was 11. "I'm just having trouble right now."

Mr. Peterson eventually wants to become a firefighter. But now he's been applying to retail jobs to have steady income by the time he moves out of his foster parents' home.

"I'm going to need a job," Mr. Peterson said. "I don't want to have to live off public assistance."

Out of Foster Care -- and Into What??

2011-09-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Out of Foster Care -- and Into What?

Miller, Marissa. Gotham Gazette, Aug. 2011.

Anthony Boyd, 22, Armstrong Pelzer, 26, and Joseph Branca, 22, all attend college, have part-time jobs and live at Schafer Hall, a supportive housing facility for former foster children in East Harlem.

When Chimore Mack Glover recently turned 21, she aged out of the New York City foster child program and so needed a place to live.

"I usually plan things ahead of time, and my first step was to get a job and find a place to live," she recalled recently. She tried to stay with family members, but one turned her down, Her grandmother was sick and so could not help. "It was also very scary because I didn't know if my foster care agency was going to help me or not," said Glover.

Despite all that, Glover now says she is doing well -- living on her own and working part time. She dreams of being a journalist some day, saying, "My grandmother always told me to chase my dreams. I love to write. It’s an outlet. If I am going through something, I will just write it down. Then I’m relieved and I’m not stressed. "

While things may have worked out well for Glover, every year hundreds of young adults must adapt to life after foster care-- and a number do not succeed. For many the transition presents a huge challenge, and though programs exist to help, they cannot aid all the young people who need it.

On Their Own
There are currently 16,000 children in the foster care system throughout New York City. Of them, about 1,100 leave the system each year, according to In Transition: A Better Future for Youth Leaving Foster Care, a report published in the New School’s Child Welfare Watch.

The majority attempt the transition to independent living on their own. Most lack any type of a strong support network. Not surprisingly, for these young adults, the transition to the "real world" abounds with financial, physical and emotional hardship.

Child Welfare Watch and an internal city review have found that about 15 percent of young adults who age out of foster care end up in the homeless shelter system within two years of their initial discharge.

"In extraordinary numbers, children who age out of the foster care system end up homeless, incarcerated or both in a brief time period," said Topher Nichols, the communications manager at Children’s Village, a New York-based organization devoted to professional and educational development for troubled youth. "When we really look hard at our own experiences as young adults, how many times we called home because we were a little short on rent or because we made a silly mistake and needed support, we have to recognize that most of us don't become successful on our own. We have a network of people who support us and take care of us. This is a critical piece missing from the lives of most youth aging out of the city."

The one-time foster children also do not have the same opportunities as many young adults, especially when it comes to education, employment and housing, which are all connected, said Kim VanBurch, coordinator of youth development at the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection. "If they don't have an education, then they can't find employment, and if they can't find employment then they won't be able to secure housing," VanBurch said.

Preparing for the Big Change
The foster care agencies -- private organizations under contract with the city to place children in appropriate homes and monitor their care -- are supposed to prepare the children under their auspices for life after foster care, said Elysia Murphy, the deputy communications director at the city's Administration for Children's Services.

"Prior to leaving care, foster care caseworkers work with adolescents to develop plans in preparation for their discharge from foster care. Agencies are expected to set developmentally appropriate expectations that encourage youth to achieve their highest potential in their careers, educational and personal lives and to enable youth to plan responsibly for their own needs," Murphy said.

Advocates, though, say many agencies don't start this preparation until a few months before the youth is slated to leave the foster care program. This leave the young adults, some of whom suffer from mental illness and emotional instability, with few resources to turn to when trying to find a place to live and a source of income.

"In the vast majority of cases meaningful transition planning by the agencies responsible for a young person in foster care ... occurs, if at all, in a last minute scramble in the months before the adolescent is to leave foster care," said Glenn Metsch-Ampel, the deputy-executive director of Lawyers for Children. "More often than not, without the intervention of their advocates and the court, these young people are faced with the prospect of leaving foster care without truly stable housing, employment or a connection to a caring adult in their community."

To add to the difficulty, the Administration for Children's Services has suffered budget cuts over the past few years that affect its ability to handle issues confronting the city's low-income youth.

"ACS has just had budget cut after budget cut, and its internal operation services have really fallen apart. Without there being strong support inside the agency, it just means those services become vulnerable and haphazard. That means that foster care agencies do not deliver services with the same consistency," said Abigail Kramer, the associate editor of Child Welfare Watch. According to research published in Child Welfare Watch, the number of families participating in preventive service programs, which help children in foster care and neglectful or abusive homes, has dropped by 30 percent decline since 2009.

Murphy, though, denied budget cuts have had an effect on transition programs. "Despite the difficult decisions made in the past two years to reduce agency spending in response to the financial climate, the agency has been able to sustain funding to support services for youth in foster care as they make the transition into adulthood," Murphy said.

Bridging the Gap
Both New York City social workers and government officials have recognized that many young adults aging out of foster care are not adequately prepared to enter into independent living without any familial or professional support network.

In 2005, the city and the state created the New York/New York III program. According to Child Welfare Watch, it provides funding for about 400 young adults who have aged out of foster care. Many of the supportive housing programs receive New York/New York III funding and thus, are able to support their residents. However, there is still a huge population of young adults leaving foster care who are left with very few options.

In the past decade, government officials, philanthropists and non-profits have created transitional housing programs. These support programs not only house young adults who have aged out of the system (at 21 in New York though they can leave at 18), but also provide them with the life skills training, academic and professional advice, and counseling to help them achieve stability in their own lives.

In the past 10 years, eight non-profits have cooperated with city agencies to establish various supportive housing programs scattered throughout the five boroughs. Most of them receive funding from a combination of private donations, and city and state programs, such as the New York State Supportive Housing Program and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Sharp cutbacks to Section 8 housing vouchers and the elimination of the Advantage program, which provided rent subsides for homeless families, has severely limited the housing options for these young adults and homeless people alike. These cuts make transitional housing programs an even more important safety net for young adults coming out of foster care.

Inside Supportive Housing
In 2001, Schafer Hall became one of the first supportive housing programs established in New York City. Located in East Harlem, Schafer Hall is one of the many housing developments run by the Lantern Group, a non-profit committed to the construction and development of permanent, special needs housing.

Schafer Hall was created to help young adults acquire the independent living skills necessary to achieve a stable lifestyle. Each resident lives in one of 25 studio apartments where he or she learns how to prepare meals, maintain a clean living space, do laundry and budget their money along with other basic skills. The residents also meet regularly with on-site caseworkers and tutors who help them make decisions about their education -- obtaining a GED or working toward an associate's and bachelor's degree -- and employment.

"Our young adults are incredible bright, strong, and resilient individuals," said Jessica Katz, the executive director of the Lantern Group. "They just need to learn the necessary life skills."

The young adults living at Schafer Hall must have some source of income and use 30 percent of it to pay their monthly rent. This teaches them how to balance a budget and set aside a portion of their monthly income for their housing needs.

Many of the other supportive housing programs in the city-such as Chelsea Foyer and the Lee also charge their clients rent and encourage the residents to seek stable employment, as opposed to welfare, as their primary source of income.

The young people, many whom leave foster care without a college degree or even a high school diploma, have limited job prospects, particularly in this economy. Despite that, Schafer Hall currently has an 85 percent employment rate amongst its residents.

For many individuals living there, Schafer Hall offers an escape from the tumult of their foster homes. "I enjoy my home being a stress-free environment now. I'm not really territorial, but I know in my head that this is my house and no one is stressing me out. I don't have to worry about that living here, and that is good enough for me," said Anthony Boyd, a 22-year-old resident, who attends Queensboro Community College and works at a human services organization.

Joseph Branca, also 22, has been in foster care for 13 years. He now lives at Schafer Hall, works as a shift manager at Duane Reade and attends Medgar Evans College in Brooklyn. "I want to give back to the community," he said. "Since I grew up in foster care, I feel like I can."

New York Children Caught in the Cycle of Poverty

2010-12-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

When Children Are Caught in the Cycle of Poverty

Mascia, Jennifer. New York Times, Dec. 18, 2010.

The economic collapse has taken a toll on vast segments of society, but it has affected some groups disproportionately. Among those are children.

In New York City, 30 percent of children are living in poverty. One out of every five children relies on local food banks or pantries for sustenance, and of these children, 79 percent rely on the National School Lunch Program.

Poverty stymies performance in school and negatively affects mental and physical health, experts say. Poor children have higher rates of asthma, are more likely to suffer a higher rate of cognitive delays and developmental disorders.

Absent intervention, these children will face great difficulty in transcending the disadvantages of their early lives and, as adults, are likely to perpetuate a cycle of poverty that has consumed generations in areas like East New York, Brooklyn; Jamaica, Queens; Morrisania in the Bronx; East Harlem; and Port Richmond on Staten Island.

Such an outcome is not acceptable to advocates like Richard R. Buery Jr., president and chief executive of the Children’s Aid Society, who said, “Those who love our country, and believe in its ideals, cannot be satisfied until the promise of equal opportunity is made true for all of our children.”

Christmas Wish: No New York youth sleeping on the streets this winter

2010-12-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

Covenant House was founded 38 years ago with the mission to help homeless teens and young adults get off the street and into productive lives.

They serve as a refuge to:

young people who are running from abuse at home
youth who've been kicked out of the house (often because of their sexual orientation)
young people who "age out" of the foster care system at age 18 and face the adult world alone.

Covenant House connects these young people with:

Shelter, including a transitional housing program
Access to medical care
Coaching in basic life skills
Opportunities to finish high school
Resources for job skill development

Staff work with youth on developing a long-term plan for their lives.

Covenant House's Transitional Housing Program: Youth pay rent to Covenant House for their apartment, and after 12-18 months when they graduate from the program, they are given ALL of their rent to help them to put a deposit on an apartment and set up a household.

More than 4,000 vacant NYC condos could be made into low-income housing

2010-06-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

The New York City chapter of the Right to the City Alliance has issued a report documenting the thousands of vacant condominium units in the city that could be converted into housing for individuals in need.

Funded by the Sociological Initiatives Foundation, the report, People Without Homes and Homes Without People: A Count of Vacant Condos in Select NYC Neighborhoods (72 pages, PDF), found that there are more than four thousand vacant condo units in nine New York City neighborhoods that could be made into low-income housing.

The report lays out several policy recommendations for the city's Department of Finance, the Empire State Development Corporation, the Mayor, and the City Council on how to covert and maintain the units as part of a broader effort to better serve the city's low-income individuals.

Opening Doors to Higher Education for Youth in Foster Care

2010-05-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

Opening Doors to Higher Education for Youth in Foster Care, from the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, addresses the financial aid reforms necessary for youth in care as they strive to attain a postsecondary education.

NY Proposed Legislation re: Immigrant Children in Foster Care

2010-04-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Dromm Bill Helps Immigrant Children In Foster Care

By John Toscano, Western Queens Gazette, March 31, 2010.

A bill that would require the city Administration for Children’s Services to create a plan to protect immigrant children in foster care and perhaps put them on the path to permanent status in the U.S. was passed by the City Council last week.

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Daniel Dromm (D–Jackson Heights), seeks to ensure that immigrant children who are eligible for Special Immigration Juvenile Status (SIJS) are identified as quickly as possible and are receiving all the appropriate benefits, Dromm who chairs the Immigration Committee, said.

Qualifying for SIJS, Dromm added, would enable undocumented children to apply for this status, become permanent residents and obtain a green card.

“Immigrant children deserve the same rights as everyone,” Dromm stated. “This bill will help children in ACS supervision get access to the immigration services they need. We must ensure that children who qualify are given the opportunities they deserve, including the ability to be put on a path towards citizenship.”

Dromm added that he was “proud to move this important bill which protects the rights of immigrant children in foster care”.

Without a dedicated plan for immigrant services, Dromm explained, once a young person turns 21, he or she become ineligible for SIJS status and also loses the opportunity to take full advantage of various services available to lawful U.S. residents.

Dromm, whose district is one of the most diverse in the city, pointed out that his legislation would result in an accurate and efficient identification and tracking system in order to coordinate immigration services that would most fully protect the rights of immigrant children.

Yay, Merli

2009-12-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

THE GREATEST LOVE: Former foster kids Merli Desrosier (left) and her big sister, Marie Estimé, are setting up house in Brooklyn. ~ Photo credits: Angel Chevrestt of the NY Post.

A 'minor' miracle: Feisty foster kid to be sister's keeper
Klein, Melissa. New York Post, Dec. 27, 2009.

Every year, Merli Desrosier promised her little sister a Christmas gift better than a new doll or the latest computer game.

"She was, like, 'Don't worry. Next Christmas, you're going to be living with me,' " said Marie Estimé, who then lived with their allegedly neglectful father. "Then it kept going -- 'next Christmas, next Christmas.' "

Merli was practically a child herself, a teenager living in foster care and attending high school.

But this Christmas, Merli made good. Now a 25-year-old college graduate, she took in her sister, now 16, and is pursuing the unusual step of adopting her. The move will legally cement a bond that has endured through years of hardship.

"Since I was 9, it's been that way -- that I'm like her mom," Merli said.

Merli's mother died four days after giving birth to Marie in 1993 because of complications from the birth and sickle cell anemia. The sisters and their brother, Yves, were shuttled between relatives and foster care before their father took them in two years later.

Merli was placed in foster care again at 16 after an argument with her father during which, she said, he tried to strangle her.

Marie and Yves stayed with their father, and Merli visited often to keep tabs on them, bringing her sister clothes and doing her hair.

Marie eventually went back to foster care. Merli continued her education, something she said her mother always stressed and she enjoyed.

"School was the only place I could be a kid, where I could be a teenager and not be a parent or an adult," she said.

Merli got a scholarship to the College of Staten Island. A financial-aid package later allowed her to attend Purchase College, and she graduated in May.

Her little sister, meanwhile, was despondent in her foster home.

"I just decided, whether or not I had a career lined up or an actual place big enough for her to live in, that I would take her in," Merli said.

Merli became Marie's foster mother, and the younger sister moved into her "mom's" Harlem studio in July.

Merli said she wanted to adopt her sister to get her out of the foster-care bureaucracy and provide her with a more normal life, one that she had promised.

But the small apartment was a roadblock, because it was not suitable for an adoption placement.

And Merli has been unable to find work in marketing or public relations, as she had hoped, and has only a part-time job at a clothing store.

The New York Foundling, the agency that oversees Marie's care, has stepped up to help with the adoption process and in securing a bigger apartment.

First, the agency asked some hard questions, to make sure Merli was in it for the long haul. Cases of siblings adopting siblings are extremely rare, with the agency overseeing just one such arrangement, out of 123 adoptions, in the last fiscal year.

"We just wanted to make sure that this was beyond a passing infatuation," said Bill Baccaglini, The Foundling's executive director. "Merli has certainly demonstrated that."

He said Merli never wavered from her goal of getting an education and one day taking in her sister.

The agency provided the security deposit and first month's rent for a two-bedroom in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A Section 8 housing subsidy will help Merli pay the $1,224 rent. The sisters will move into their new home in a couple of weeks. The adoption process could take up to 10 months.

Merli, Marie and their brother -- now a 24-year-old college student in Florida -- spent Christmas together. While Marie said she got good gifts, the holiday wasn't about presents.

"I didn't really want anything," she said, "because I already got what I wanted -- which was to live with my sister."

Grant to assist Rochester service providers in understanding & responding to impact of trauma on foster children

2009-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

Mt. Hope Family Center Awarded $1.2 Million as Part of Child Trauma Network
Hagen, Susan. University of Rochester News, Nov. 25, 2009.

Mt. Hope Family Center has been awarded a three-year, $1.2 million grant to join the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, a federally funded partnership of academic and community-based centers aimed at improving care for children and families struggling with abuse, neglect, community violence, and other forms of trauma.

The new funding will allow the University of Rochester center to provide treatment for 270 young children in foster care and their biological and foster families and to develop effective therapies that can be used at centers nationwide. Mt. Hope is the only program in Western New York invited to join the network.

"Being selected is huge because Mt. Hope will now be able to partner with about 60 centers across the nation, all focused on evidence-based therapies for children recovering from trauma," says Sheree Toth, executive director of Mt. Hope Family Center. "It's an incredible opportunity to bring in resources, one that not only enhances our capabilities, but that changes our community."

Toth explained that the new resources will strengthen ongoing efforts by Rochester-area service providers to understand and recognize the effect of trauma on children. For instance, she explained, a high percentage of youngsters referred for behavior problems or mental health issues in this community also have experienced trauma. Understanding that history and learning how to help children recover can be key to preventing a lifetime of problems.

The grant will supply support for a variety of innovative therapies that have been clinically proven effective, including one of the center's most promising: Child-Parent Psychotherapy. "We believe a strong parent-child relationship is the key to preventing maltreatment and building healthy families," says Toth. To reinforce those ties, psychotherapists will meet with families weekly, helping parent and child nurture a close, connected relationship and encouraging appreciation for the child's developmental level. Research shows that the psychotherapy program builds parents' sense of competency and strengthens children's sense of security and attachment, improving their chances for success. Without such intervention, explains Toth, families struggling with trauma often fail to create a secure relationship, which "sets children up for a cascade of failures in their whole life." As an indication of the success of the approach, says Toth, 48 of the 60 members of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network have expressed interest in child-parent psychotherapy.

The grant also will make available one-on-one therapy with children to help them better understand and cope with the emotional shock they have experienced. For example, children who have suffered physical abuse often believe that they deserve the ill treatment, explains Toth. Therapy helps children let go of these unhealthy feelings of guilt and recover a sense of safety. It teaches children problem solving and self-calming skills and helps them to identify and express emotions appropriately. To ease the adjustment to foster care, center therapists also work with caretakers, encouraging understanding of and appropriate responses to the negative behaviors that often accompany post-traumatic stress.

The exciting thing about this grant, says Toth, is that it will bring proven treatments for trauma to those who need them most. "That's a significant advance over the 1970s and 80s, when service providers basically thought, 'Well, I'll be a nice person to these children and somehow that will make them better," she says. "Children and their families now have the possibility of benefiting from interventions that we know will work."

About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is one of the nation’s leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Memorial Art Gallery.

Underground Railroad to Success for Foster Care Youth

2009-11-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

Local Advocate for Foster Children Awarded Business Grant
Baristanet, Nov. 24, 2009.

Tanisha Cunningham knew too well how difficult the transition from foster care to emancipation can be. Having been raised in foster care and group homes herself, the sudden transition to independence was jarring. "The fact that I succeeded is not the usual case. It was not because I was given the resources, but because I sought them out for myself."

Her own experience in foster care inspired her to work in the New York City Child Welfare Office and to later pursue advanced degrees in Public Administration. In January 2009, she started The Underground Railroad to Success, Inc., a Montclair-based non-profit designed to provide resources to children transitioning out of the foster care system. According to Cunningham, most children in this situation never receive information about available resources, information that could assist with housing, job opportunities, and tuition grants for higher education.

The website lists dire statistics about the path of emancipated foster children: "According to the Child Welfare League of America, 25 percent become homeless, 56 percent are unemployed, 27 percent of male children end up in jail."

Currently, the new organization's activities mostly center around arranging workshops for children aging out of foster care in the age groups of 15 - 17, or recently emancipated adults between the ages of 18 - 24. These workshops focus on a variety of life skills, such as learning how to manage stress and emotions, set up bank accounts, and dress for interviews. "These are things that may seem obvious to you, but for them they are not....Most kids coming out of foster care are not educated, they have system hopped from foster care, group homes, or been incarcerated," said Cunningham. "They need to be taught these skills."

Cunningham leads most of the workshops herself, but sometimes seeks the help of professionals, such as arranging for a Rutgers faculty member to talk about the process of applying for college, or staff members from local banks to discuss financial literacy.

In the future, Cunningham would like to raise the funds to create a group home for older children. For now though, the organization is still focusing on gathering available resources for foster children. Having worked in the New York foster care system, the New Jersey laws and resources are considerably more complicated by comparison, and the organization's first goals are to understand and compile the available resources to help the children.

URS was recently awarded a $500 stimulus micro-grant from Investing In Women, a group that empowers women with small businesses or non-profits. The money will be used toward marketing URS, says Cunningham. "There are a lot of people who don't know about this need, and we are on a mission to raise awareness."

URS is welcomes donations for their services and programs, as well as dedicated volunteers to serve as mentors.

New York Life Foundation Seeks Proposals from New York City and Westchester Nonprofits Serving Children

2009-10-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

Since 2004, the New York Life Foundation Awards Program has supported smaller nonprofits by providing six $25,000 grants per year: one in each New York City borough and one in Westchester County, NY. These grants are earmarked for one-time-only support for existing programs.

Can you apply for a Foundation Awards Program grant? Yes, if:

- Your program is located in and serves young people in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, or Westchester County in New York.

- The total budget for your organization is $5 million or less.

- Your organization is a 501(c)3 and has at least two full-time staff members.

- Your program serves disadvantaged youth, including those who are in foster care or aging out of foster care, are homeless, or are neither in school nor working.

- Your program prepares young people for higher education or the workplace and equips them to be responsible citizens. Program activities should enrich academic performance and educational commitment; provide a foundation in basic skills, such as reading, writing, mathematics and science, and enhance thinking skills, such as decision-making, problem-solving and reasoning.

Apply from October 1 to December 15, 2009

Author of Cheetah Girls series grew up in foster care

2009-09-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

'The Cheetah Girls' creator talks to EWN
7Online.com, September 05, 2009.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Deborah Gregory is an inspiration to many.

Homeless on the sidewalks of Brooklyn at the age of three, she was separated from her mother and became a ward of the state. Now, she's a best-selling author, famous for her creation of "The Cheetah Girls" phenomenon and her second book of the "Catwalk" series is out next week. Deborah Gregory spoke to Eyewitness News about growing up in foster care and her books.

You grew up in the foster care system. While all such experiences are different, what was it like for you?

Mine was in the 25 percentile-children who are placed in high risk situations. It's a complicated system so there is no one to point the finger at. My first foster mother was illiterate. She couldn't read or write one letter of the alphabet. The hardest part of course is the aftermath. Trying to sort out what happened. I didn't know where my mother was, or how I ended up in the system. When I became a journalist, a contributing writer for ESSENCE magazine, I began trying to sort it out.

You aged out of the foster care system at 18. What was crucial in piecing together your life?

I had so many HOLES. It was important for me to try to figure out to the best of my ability-exactly what happened. How did I end up in foster care? Where was my mother? After ten long years of searching for answers, I was able to find some closure. My mother was evicted, homeless with three children. We then became wards of the state. Her three children became wards of the state and we were separated-placed in different children's centers. I later found out that there were two other children. I don't know one of my siblings. The other is dead. Most importantly, I searched for my mother. I found out that she was committed to a mental institution. I got a court order and was allowed to see her records at Central Islip Mental Institution in Long Island where she had been committed for nine years. I got from there the most important thing I could get: a small, black and white photo of her from the folder!

Can you ever really heal from childhood trauma?

No, you cannot. It is a movie myth that you just "move on." You cannot leave your past behind. What it means to be a human being is to be a fleshy part of the past, present and future. This is what shapes you. There is not a day that goes by I don't think about what my experiences were growing up in foster care. About my missing mother. Or about the father I never knew. At least I'm honest and don't pretend. The cracks remain-what I try to do is repair the cracks to the best of my ability. Thanks to therapy, I was able to do a decent job at that-but that's all-just decent. I'm still and will always remain a wounded person with lots of holes and strength and sadness and humor. In other words, a typical New Yawker! I did not grow up in a foster home on a farm in Maine like someone I know and adore (Victoria Rowell). Growing up in the foster care system in marginal foster homes in New York City was far more wicked-every kind of craziness coming at you-I mean, walking down the street to the store was like surviving an episode of Animal Kingdom without the safari gear!

What would you like to resolve?

There are millions of people walking around the globe who do not know who their father is. It creates such a hole. At some point, I was told that I was biracial, although I didn't believe it, but the denial finally lifted when I got a DNA test and discovered that it was true. I have 48 percent European DNA. So, I always wanted to know the ethnic heritage of my father. Thanks to DNA testing, I was able to confirm that he was white (European DNA) but that's all they could tell me. If it had been my mother who was white (mitochondrial DNA) they could have told me the region of my maternal ancestors. It leaves a hole inside of course when you don't know who your father is. No name. No photo. No history. I wish the world would institute a global DNA bank-where everyone had to put their DNA into a bank, then this way whenever someone wanted to find people related to them, they could. Unlike the search through adoption records, you wouldn't even have to know the name of the person-just submitting your DNA would provide the match-because there is always someone in the world who is related to you. We are all connected. So all those people who are related to my father, I never got to meet. It would have been cool.

This month, I became a bone marrow donor. It's possible through HLA tissue typing that they will be able to tell me POSSIBLY the ethnic group of my father. I have to wait six weeks. I hope I find out! That will be so cool-to finally know my birth father's ethnic heritage!

What's the inspiration behind your teen series Catwalk?

Fashion! On a recent AOL study, fashion designer was in the TOP TEN category of dream careers. And there practically isn't a girl alive who doesn't fantasize about what it would be like to be a MODEL. I was a model-for one glorious year-and wish I had the emotional stamina to have pursued it, but the aftermath of growing up in foster care overwhelmed my life.

CATWALK shows the inner workings of the fashion world. Like with Cheetah Girls, I envision CATWALK in a synergistic way: I see the characters in the books, but I see them on the screen, the style and even the opportunity to empower teens through runway lessons and live fashion show events. That's how I think&Fashion is a global force-it's a way to bring multi-culturism into the forefront-my characters are from all parts of the globe-and I'm glad I got to create a few gay teen characters too as they are an essential part of any fashionable tale. One of the CATWALK characters, Nole Canoli, was inspired by my close friend, Nole Marin, who is a fashion stylist and former judge on America's Next Top Model. He was also on the ABC show True Beauty. I can't wait to see that character come to life on screen-prancing around with his thick black Gucci glasses on his pudgy face-and carrying his pooch Countess Coco in his Prada bag!

In CATWALK, the characters have their own glossary of words. What is a FELINE FATALE?

It's a girl who worships at the altar of pinkdown-because pink is not just a color, it's a cat=itude. It's a girl who never says goodbye to HELLO KITTY and wears her catty style with confidence!

The Cheetah Girls was an international onscreen success. Are there any plans To bring CATWALK to TV?

YES! CATWALK has been optioned by TEEN NICK network for a TV series! Like the Cheetah Girls, the CATWALK characters are destined to have an onscreen shelf life&And I'm delirious that the TEEN NICK network is so excited about it. They are the perfect network for it-they have a built in fan base with teens-many of whom are avid DeGrassi fans--I can't count the number of Cheetah Girls fans who are obsessed with DeGrassi. They love it. Also, TEEN NICK depicts real teens-and that's what I'm aiming for-a campy, multi-cultural and fashionable platform. Development is what it is, but I can only keep my fingers crossed that the diverse CATWALK characters will get their day onscreen. They deserve it! It took five years for the first Cheetah Girls movie to find its way onscreen. TV and film development is a long process-and I plan on kissing a lot of catnip and crosses to keep my strength up&.!

This time around though, I will serve as executive producer and co-write the pilot with Jacob Epstein, who was an EP on SHARK and WITHOUT A TRACE. His wife, Susie Norris Epstein, for VP of SERIES for Disney Channel, pursued vigorously to snag the rights to the Cheetah Girls. So she is also attached and I really dig her style and sense of family dynamics. She's a dedicated mother and tres stylish and funny. When you're dealing with something like fashion, there is nothing better than bringing the story alive on the screen. Sashay, parlay!

Were fans upset that Raven did not reprise her beloved role as Galleria Garibaldi in the third movie sequel, `Cheetah Girls: One World?'

They were so disappointed that my computer froze from all the sad emails! The avalanche of response from fans everywhere I go is palpable. And we're talking about children, so they really don't understand reality. The truth is, when a talent becomes closely related to a beloved character-such as Galleria Garibaldi, the leader of The Cheetah Girls-you shouldn't disappoint. Just dust off the debris and don't disappoint the fans! Simply put, Raven could have done the third movie-and went back to crafting her master plan for "solo'' stardom. Even Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall put aside their differences to go on the stroll-again-in their well-worn Manolos to film the movie version of "Sex and The City.'' But, here you have a young black actress-singer, who has an even bigger responsibility to her fans because she is an even bigger role model because of the limited opportunities that Black actresses are given to create such memorable characters--and what does she do: opt out of the third Cheetah Girls sequel, so she could do, what? "College Road Trip''? Puhleese-fire the psychic who advised steering her star vehicle on that "road-less-traveled'' to the box office because, "knock, knock'': her crystal ball is cracking, hello! Of course, I wish her well, but the rule of the Hollywood jungle is simple: once a cheetah, always a cheetah--so show their spots!

What's in for fashion for fall?

Pink Cheetah! It's always in. And short booties worn with footless textured tights. Headbands are skinnier and skirts are not as short as last year. So give those micro minis to a toddler consignment store. Maxi coats are in for winter worn with fur pom=pom hats-preferably pink ones.

What's in store for the CATWALK series?

The second book in the series - CATWALK: STRIKE A POSE will hit bookstores on September 8. Visit Cheetahrama

More about Deborah: For Deborah Gregory, a best-selling author and award-winning writer who had contributed to Essence, Redbook, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe and More, survival was crucial. Homeless on the sidewalks of Brooklyn at age three with her single mother and two sisters, Gregory was separated from her family and became a ward of the State. She spent her childhood in the New York City foster care system under ACS until she aged out of the system at 18. Upon becoming a journalist, in 1990 she spent a large portion of her career searching for the mother who was committed and piecing together the puzzle of her early years and a painful family legacy. She channeled her pain into writing, creating diverse characters that would empower and unite tween and teen girls across the country.

"The Cheetah Girls" unprecedented franchise success for the Disney Channel began with the airing of the first Cheetah Girls movie in 2003. Within two years of the movie's debut, the fictional group gained a staggering global fan base, topped the soundtrack charts with a double-platinum soundtrack and enjoyed a highly-rated DVD release. In 2006, "The Cheetah Girls 2" made its debut and was the #1 basic cable movie that year among kids 6-11 and tweens 9-14.

The CATWALK series has officially been optioned by The N (which will be renamed TeenNick in the fall) for development. Girls across the U.S. will fall in love once again with Gregory's dynamic and diverse urban characters who represent survival.

Gregory will also serve as the television series' executive producer and co-write the pilot episode with TV veteran scribe Jacob Epstein ("Shark" and "Without A Trace"). Susie Norris-Epstein also serves as the series Executive Producer. Norris-Epstein was Vice President, Series Television for the Disney Channel, where she was responsible for developing the smash hit, Lizzie McGuire, which launched the career of teen star, Hillary Duff, and discovered The Cheetah Girls book series before its initial publication in 1999, snagging the dramatic rights in the process.

Gregory's Catwalk deal with The N was brokered by Lauren Heller Whitney of the William Morris Endeavor Entertainment and attorney, Lisa Davis, a senior partner at Kurnit, Klein, Selz law firm in New York City.

'Once they are in our house, they're OUR children'

2009-06-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

'Mom' to many
Pike, Farah Jadran. Eagle Newspapers, June 11, 2009.

Mary Hudgins stands in her North Syracuse home with her many Mother's Day gifts.
For more than 12 years Mary and Bobby Lee Hudgins Sr. and their four children have called their North Syracuse residence home. But for more than 17 years, 26-plus children have called the Hudgins “mom and dad.”

The Hudgins have always had a lot of love and care to give even after they had their first son Keith, 40, and their triplets Bobby Lee, Kenneth Lee and Calvin Lee, now 34 years old.

Even though Mother’s Day passed almost two weeks ago, the Hudgins dining room table is still covered in cards, flowers, gifts and balloons given to Mary by the numerous children that still call her “mom.”

“I’m still celebrating,” she said.

As she remembered her own childhood growing up in a family of seven children, she had only her father with her life. Although she didn’t have a mother figure, there was neighbor named Miss Clara, who she still thinks of as a mother.

“Miss Clara had one child that she adopted, but no other children,” Hudgins said. “But she looked out for other kids in the neighborhood.”

Like Miss Clara, Hudgins said she truly believes that her upbringing has made her into the loving woman she is today.

“It’s like the parallel to where I am today,” she said of Miss Clara’s presence in her life. “She taught me many things, but most importantly, she taught me about the Lord.”

Firmly believing in Christianity, the Hudgins family attends New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Syracuse with several family members and two foster children that are in their care presently.

Because of their faith, the Hudgins never lost hope in one foster child in particular, Allen. Although each foster child is different and most have different needs that parents need to attend to, Hudgins said she couldn’t believe the things that one of their foster children went through.

Allen came to the Hudgins’ home when he was 11 years old. No matter the problems Allen had, the Hudgins wanted to make sure they gave him a good life for as long as he wanted to be with the family.

“Once they’re in our house, they’re our children,” she said. “We’re devoted no matter what.”

Hudgins said she sees Allen as special because he stayed with the family even after he aged out of the foster program at age 18. He finally felt ready to live on his own when he was 22 years old.
Now in his late 20s, Allen still calls the Hudgins “mom and dad,” even after many years of struggling to overcome challenges for a normal family dynamic.

“We had to teach him so many things,” she said. “He didn’t know how to use a bar of soap and take a bath, and about nutrition.”

She remembered the first time she realized his eating habits when she was making liver for dinner.

“I was cleaning it [liver] and seasoning it when he asked me why I was doing all of this,” she said. “He said that he was used to eating it raw.”

Baffled by the fact that this young boy had eaten something like liver raw made her feel more compassion and a stronger need to turn him around. Hudgins said the environment that children grow up in has such an impact, that Allen was starting over from scratch since he had never had a good example to follow. His nutritional habits were such that he would eat bacon, sausage and eggs all uncooked.

“Even though this happened, he was never ashamed,” she said. “And he knows his mom and dad are proud of him.”

Allen had other issues like hoarding food because he grew up with the fear that he might not eat the next day. Hudgins said she would make 10 or 12 sweet-potato pies at a time with the intention of freezing most of them.

“I remember finding out that he took a few of the pies to eat at the bus stop,” she said. “Those pies only had the batter poured in them so they were raw.”

Like any bad habit, she said it took time and a lot of love and care to help Allen break old habits and form new ones.

Aside from poor eating habits, Allen was never given proper attention while growing up.

“He wanted attention so bad that he would follow me all around the house,” she said.

Allen had a hard time understanding boundaries at first, but the family pushed forward to help him learn. The Hudgins experienced hard times while Allen was in school because his behavior was so erratic, there were several times when they thought they couldn’t help Allen and should just give up.

“Even though we wanted to give up, we thought about how if God didn’t forgive us for our sins we wouldn’t be here,” she said. “My strong conviction in God made us keep him.”

As the Hudgins began to believe in Allen more and more, he started to thrive by attending church more and acting as a respectful family member.

Hudgins said Allen’s living situation before coming to their home was unbelievable.
Allen also struggled with his faith at first because he started to ask where God was in his life when he was eating out of a trashcan or going without a bath.

“Now he is so involved with church, even more than I am,” she said. “He plays in the church’s band and tells others about his relationship with Jesus.”

Because of Allen’s upbringing before the foster care, Hudgins said she truly believes that he has come from the worst of times to the best.

“That in itself is a blessing,” she said. “These children are the purpose of my life.”

Hudgins said she has always had a soft spot for the children and the elderly in her life. As she has come to care for so many kids, she wanted people to know that she and her husband had been taking care of children even before stipends and foster care became what they are today.

The family had been taking in children from time to time no matter if it was for a few days, weeks or months.

“This is my calling from God, the ministry of my life,” she said. “It’s all about the kids and loving those kids.”

While some parents experience “empty nest syndrome” after all their children have grown up and moved out, Hudgins said their home will always be filled with kids that they will love forever. She recommends fostering to those that feel they have love to give.

“Become a foster parent please, because there’s no need for people to feel a void in life,” she said. “Share the love you have because God didn’t give us love to sit on it.”

Even people scared to try fostering should try it, she said. Her faith in God urges Hudgins to care for the children of the Lord.

“I always think of the book of Matthew that says, ‘Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’” she said.

Throughout her many years of fostering, she said that people who believe they can’t do something should try it because they can do it, and the blessing would be insurmountable.

“You’ll be doing God’s will and he will richly bestow blessings upon you,” she said.

Infant dies in NY foster home of 'shaken baby syndrome'

2009-06-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

Mother to sue over son slain in foster care
County should have prevented it, she says
Drumsta, Raymond. Ithaca Journal, June 8, 2009.

ITHACA - A 14-month-old boy in foster care died due to negligence by the Tompkins County Department of Social Services, according to his mother.

In a notice filed with the claims court, Kristine Freda announced her intention to sue the county in connection with the death of son Adrian Hines last fall. Her attorney, Edward E. Kopko, filed the notice, which alleges that Adrian suffered "severe life-threatening injuries, including head trauma" while in the foster home.

Kopko could not be reached for comment, and the county attorney's office declined to comment. District Attorney Gwen Wilkinson said that her staff continues to investigate Adrian's death, but that no criminal charges have been filed.

Around 5:20 p.m. Oct. 2, deputies, Freeville firefighters and Etna firefighters responded to the report of an unresponsive child at the foster home on Etna Road, sheriff's officials said. Adrian was taken to Cayuga Medical Center and on to Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, where he "subsequently died from injuries he sustained," they added.

According to sheriff's officials, an autopsy later determined that Adrian's death was a homicide.

After Adrian suffered his injuries, a doctor at Upstate Medical Center told Freda that the child was brain dead because of head trauma - including swelling and bleeding of his brain - caused by shaken baby syndrome, the notice went on to say.

"Adrian sustained conscious pain and suffering and wrongful death because of the negligence and recklessness of employees, agents and/or servants of (the Department of Social Services)," the notice alleged.

Among many other functions, DSS "oversees recruitment and retention of qualified, caring families who are willing to provide temporary foster care for children and to work with families toward reunification," according to its Web site.

The department removed Adrian from Freda's home in July, the notice said, and filed a neglect petition. The petition alleged that Freda had hit Adrian, shaken him and screamed at him on May 22, 2008, and that she had failed to provide appropriate supervision and make a "sanitary and safe home" for him - all of which Freda had emphatically denied, the papers said.

"A doctor evaluated Adrian subsequent to May 22, 2008 and found Adrian to be without injury," the notice said. Nonetheless, DSS placed Adrian in a foster home on July 24, then moved him to the foster home on Etna Road a few days later, according to the notice.
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The foster home was "more dangerous of an environment than Freda's home," the notice alleges, where Adrian was regularly left in the care of the foster family's 15-year-old daughter "without adult supervision."

Adrian died because DSS failed to contact Freda's extended family to place him in their care and failed to investigate the foster home before placing him in it - all protocols that should've been followed, the notice said. The doctor at Upstate Medical Center, who had 30 years of experience, advised Freda that it would be best to take Adrian off life support "and let him die as peacefully as possible," the notice went to say.

"At 12:28 a.m., Oct. 3, 2008, Adrian died in Freda's arms," the notice said. Freda intends to sue for her pain and suffering due to Adrian's death, along with his medical and funeral expenses, "which have been accumulated in an amount to be determined at trial of this action."

$7.4M budget cut will further jeopardize safety of children

2009-06-08T08:04:00.001-07:00

Proposed Cuts to Foster Care Protested at New York City Hall
Phillip, Joshua. Epoch Times, June 4, 2009.

Foster care agencies are being threatened with a $7.4 million cut in New York City’s 2010 budget. On Thursday the steps of City Hall were swamped with more than 100 parents and foster care providers.

They were joined by Council Member Bill de Blasio to rally against the proposals, concerned that the cuts would jeopardize the safety of children throughout New York.

“We cannot play Russian roulette with the safety of our children,” said Council Member Bill de Blasio in a press release.

Several sectors of New York are being impacted as the city tries to close a $1.9 billion budget gap. The deficit emerged largely from a $6.8 billion drop in anticipated tax revenue, as jobs and homes were lost amid the global financial crisis.

“Times are tough all over, but gutting programs that protect children is not the answer,” said Mr. de Blasio.

The five percent cut will impact the city’s 35 foster care agencies and near 17,000 foster children. Among the effects of the cuts would be the elimination of 1,000 positions at the Administration for Children’s Services.

Richard Altman, CEO of the Jewish Child Care Association explained that the cuts will result in staff reductions and services that will cause longer lengths of stay for kids in foster care.

“These abused and neglected children and youth are literally in the custody of the city--so the city must not cut the services that protect their safety and well-being," said Mr. Altman. "These children deserve a permanent family connection without delay.”

There is also a proposal to eliminate funding for the Child Safety Initiative, which helps to lower caseloads at community-based preventive service programs. The initiative currently costs the city $4.2 million a year.

“Without the funds needed to support lower caseloads through the Child Safety Initiative our ability to perform ... will be seriously compromised,” said Charles Barrios, division director of Brooklyn Preventive Service Programs at Good Shepherd Services.

Sandra Ferguson: Foster and Adoptive Parent

2009-05-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

National Foster Month
Lee, Karen. News 10 Now, May 25, 2009.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Sandra Ferguson first became interested in foster parenting about seven years ago. She disapproved of how some foster children she knew were being treated, so she signed up to do it herself.

"I always wanted a big family but I didn't want to have a big family. So this was my way of giving back to the community," Ferguson said.

She's since fostered six children and is currently in the process of adopting the last two. They've been living with her and her two biological children for the last few years.

"There is no difference. She provides them with every opportunity that she does with her own biological children and she has done a great deal by opening up her home to these teenage, more difficult kids that a lot of people are scared to take," said Jean Galle, Hillside Foster Care Manager.

Ferguson admits that raising older children has been a challenge as they tend to be more guarded. But with the combination of patience and love, she says they will open up. Ferguson witnessed that this past Mother’s Day through a text message.

There's said to be no comparison to the bond that's felt between a parent and child. And it doesn't matter if that relationship began in the womb or later on in life. May is National Foster Care Month and our Karen Lee visited the Hillside Children's Center in Syracuse and spoke with one foster mother who is encouraging others to take on the challenge.

"He says thank you for being my mom and almost brought me to tears at work but that lets me know that I must be doing something right," Ferguson said.

Foster care agencies like the Hillside Children's Center are looking for more people like Ferguson. For those who can't be a full-time mom and dad, there are other options.

"They may only take a child on the weekend or an as need basis. So they may have not have the time or the ability to take on a child full-time but they can become a supportive resource for a child in that way," Galle said.

"These kids just need to know what love is. That there's people that care about them, that care more about them waking up and going to sleep, that really actually care about their well-being and wanting them to succeed in life," Ferguson said.

If you would like more information on becoming a foster parent, contact the Hillside Children's Center at (315) 423-5112.

Judith Leekin's alleged abuse of 10 disabled foster children

2009-05-22T07:50:00.001-07:00

Ten Sue NY in Foster-Child Abuse Case
Courthouse News Service, May 01, 2009.

The City of New York Administration for Children's Services allowed a woman to collect money for years for 10 disabled foster children she beat, starved, humiliated, and imprisoned, handcuffed, in a basement for years, according to a complaint in Federal Court.

Judith Leekin - not named as a defendant in this case - used six aliases to collect the checks, according to the complaint. The crimes allegedly occurred from 1986 to 1994.

The defendants allegedly placed the children with Leekin after failing to identify her fictitious identities, and failed to supervise or monitor her or the children.

Here are the defendants: City of New York, Administration for Children's Services fka Child Welfare Administration, St. Joseph's Services for Children fka Catholic Child Care Society of the Diocese of Brooklyn, Heartshare Human Services fka Catholic Guardian Society Diocese of Brooklyn, and SCO Family of Services fka St. Christopher-Ottilie.

Lead attorneys for the plaintiffs are Howard Talenfeld of Fort Lauderdale and Thomas Moore of Manhattan.

Aging out of foster care in the midst of a recession

2009-05-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

Too Old for Foster Care, and Facing the Recession
Fremson, Ruth. The New York Times, April 7, 2009.

Caption: Melissa Diaz, 19, left the foster care system and is living in a shelter for young people while training to be a nursing assistant.

Even in boom times, young people who become too old for the foster-care system often struggle to make it on their own, lacking families, job skills or adequate educations. Now, the recession has made the challenges of life after foster care even more formidable, especially for those seeking federal housing vouchers, which are contingent on having an income.

Caption: Michael Smith will turn 21 in August, and his foster care benefits will expire. He has been searching for work since October.

Since the beginning of this year, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services has been providing letters to those about to leave the foster care system, certifying that they are likely to be eligible for public assistance and thus easing the application process when they are ready. Yet, many child-welfare advocates worry that a growing number will still end up homeless.

“They get a lot of resources until they’re 21, and then essentially none,” said James J. Golden, the executive director of the Edwin Gould Academy in East Harlem, which provides housing exclusively to former foster children. “It’s like falling off a cliff for some of them.”

In New York, foster children are allowed to leave the system when they turn 18 but can stay until 21; last year, 407 wards turned 21, while 547 opted out early — 375 at age 18, and 172 at 19 or 20.

Once discharged from the system, some move in with family or friends, get jobs or go to college. Others apply for welfare as their sole source of income, and often end up homeless.

Administrators at the Chelsea Foyer at the Christopher, which houses dozens of former and current foster youths, said that typically, 90 percent of their residents were employed, but that in February only 70 percent had jobs.

“They are the low man on the totem pole for jobs anyway,” said Jerome Kilbane, the executive director of Covenant House New York, a nonprofit that operates shelters for young people. “Now they are even more at a disadvantage.”

Michael Smith, 20, said he was increasingly anxious as he approached the day in August that he will have to leave his foster home in Brooklyn. He has been searching for work since October, leaving résumés at places like McDonald’s and the clothing stores Express and H & M.

Mr. Smith graduated from high school in Queens in 2006 and went to Kingsborough Community College, but he dropped out after his sickle-cell anemia caused him to miss class frequently.

“I’m coming up to my 21st birthday, when I’m no longer going to be supported,” Mr. Smith said. “I feel overlooked all the times I do go apply for these jobs. But I have to do this, or else I’ll be out on the street.”

Officials at the Administration for Children’s Services say they do everything possible to avert that, including the letters that help smooth the application process for public assistance.

The child-welfare agency and the 36 foster-care groups with which it contracts begin to prepare children for independence as early as age 14. There are workshops on budgeting, job hunting, how to sign up for health insurance and how to negotiate with a landlord over rent.

At age 19, foster youths begin to talk to caseworkers about housing options, which commonly include Section 8 vouchers, public housing projects and supportive housing, where counseling and job training might be available on site.

The Administration for Children’s Services provides a one-time stipend of $750 as a cushion to foster youths when they exit the system. They are also eligible for a monthly payment of $300 from the city, from the time the leave foster care until they are 21 ½, if they are not receiving any other public housing subsidy, such as Section 8.

Most of those leaving foster care are entitled to Section 8, which typically allows tenants to rent apartments for one-third of their monthly income. But that means they need income to qualify. And with unemployment rates in New York rising precipitously, foster-care workers are worried.

“To be honest, I’m afraid that our youth are really going to be unable to secure housing,” said Jane Feyder, the assistant director at the New York Foundling Fontana Center for Child Protection. “They don’t have the work experience that other people have who are looking for jobs right now. They’re competing with so many other people who have advantages over them.”

Even advocates for foster youth acknowledge that they are a particularly difficult group to employ.

Many lack high school diplomas, having spent adolescence being shuttled from home to home. The responsibilities of a first job can come as a shock, and many quit out of frustration.

“A year ago, if they’d lose one $9- an-hour job, there was usually another one that we could find them,” Mr. Golden said. “Now it’s a little more costly to become unemployed.”

One of the former foster children in his care, Jessica Molina, landed a job in January 2008, working in computer technology at Merrill Lynch. She was laid off in June when the company downsized, and has been working at temporary jobs since.

“Like everyone else, I have my fingers crossed that I’ll find something,” Ms. Molina, 22, said. But looking at the gaps in her résumé, she is often reminded of the constant moves between group homes she endured during her teenage years. “Sometimes you’re looked at as a castaway,” she said. “It’s like coming from a totally different place.”

Brenda Tully, the program director for Chelsea Foyer at the Christopher, said residents have been laid off or seen their hours reduced at jobs in gyms, nightclubs and clothing stores.

“There’s a much greater fear among the young people about what to expect,” Ms. Tully said. “They are very, very concerned that they’re not going to be able to find housing that’s affordable.”

Stephany Diaz, a housing specialist for New York Foundling, one of the city’s largest foster-care agencies, said she has begun prodding youths to apply for public assistance once they are officially discharged from care.

“I used to discourage them to go down that route,” she said. “But now we almost have to.”

Since 2002, the Administration for Children’s Services has tried to move teenagers out of group homes and into foster care, hoping that when the time comes to leave, the children would have families to turn to.

“We want children to leave care with a loving, caring and supportive adult who’s going to continue to work with them long past their 21st birthday,” said Lorraine Stephens, a deputy commissioner at the Administration for Children’s Services. “We don’t want any kid to leave without someone connected to them.”

But many children have tenuous connections to foster families, at best.

Mr. Smith, whose aunt is his foster parent, said staying with her after his 21st birthday is not an option. “She’s moving in with her boyfriend,” he said.

Melissa Diaz, 19, left the foster care system more than a year ago, shortly after her foster mother died. Ms. Diaz later moved to Covenant House, and after nearly three months of searching found a job stocking shelves at Duane Reade.

She is training to become a nursing assistant and trying to earn enough money to become independent and afford housing on her own. “That would be great,” she said. “It would be a blessing from God.”

Overlap Between Prison and Child Welfare Systems

2009-05-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

A Tangle of Problems Links Prison, Foster Care
Chen, Michelle. Gotham Gazette, April 13, 2009.

Wanda Chambers came to understand motherhood in an unlikely setting: the solitude of a maximum-security prison.

Chambers, now 41, had struggled with addiction for years; she had tried treatment but couldn't stop using. Her crisis bottomed out in 1998, when child welfare authorities took her infant daughter, Princess, and placed her in the home of a foster parent. Soon afterward, Chambers was incarcerated on a drug conviction.

At Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, "I was locked up long enough to really strengthen my mind and change my way of thinking," she recalled. When she got out about three years later, she was determined to prove to the government she deserved to have her daughter back. She went through 18 months of court-supervised drug treatment and parenting skills programs before finally regaining custody.

The experience continues to shape her family. She works as an advocate for parents dealing with child welfare. Meanwhile, Princess' former foster mother remains involved, helping care for the child as a co-parent.

For Chambers, prison and foster care brought regret and revelation. "It was definitely a learning experience," she said. "You lose everything, and you break family ties. And I always wanted to get it right, but I just didn't know how."

In New York City's social service structure, two major institutions wield the power to separate families in the name of safety. With the aim of protecting society as a whole, criminal justice agencies sweep up parents through courts and prisons, while the Administration for Children's Services, charged with safeguarding individual children from harm, routinely removes young people from troubled homes. Though driven by different goals, the two systems interact in many families. Critics warn that both types of intervention may further deepen patterns of emotional and social trauma for children and parents.

Interlocking Systems, Interlocking Problems
There are no comprehensive statistics on families involved with both the child welfare and criminal justice systems in New York City. According to New York State's Department of Correctional Services, the majority of inmates report having at least one child. The Correctional Association, a New York-based advocacy group, estimates that statewide, more than 10,000 children had a mother imprisoned in New York prisons or jails. National data indicate that most mothers in state prisons lived with their children before their current sentence. Of mothers in state prisons with children under 18, about one in ten reported having a child in foster or institutional care; many more had children living with other relatives, though some relatives may also serve as "kinship" foster caregivers.

But national child welfare data reveal more subtle overlaps between the systems. One third of all children reported to local child welfare agencies for being maltreated at home had a primary caregiver who had been arrested at least once. Long-term studies show that families often cycle through social problems that can lead both to losing a child to foster care and to losing a parent to prison: issues such as poverty, substance abuse and mental illness. Demographics underline the connections: people in poor and black communities tend to have heavier involvement with both child-protective services and the criminal justice system.

Reflecting the synergy of environment and family dynamics, most child maltreatment reports are tied not to outright abuse, but "neglect" -- failure to provide sufficient care. A child could become technically neglected if her parent cannot afford adequate food and housing, or is consumed by addiction.

Although a parent's encounter with law enforcement also will not necessarily cause her to lose custody, Children's Services may intervene on an emergency basis if an arrest leaves the child unattended. Reform advocates say these placements can lead to prolonged separation as families wade through the child welfare bureaucracy.

"Over a child's lifetime, mothers and fathers may be arrested multiple times, intermittently use drugs, or have other problems that affect the child's home," said Susan Phillips, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "People not only progress through the criminal justice system; they loop through it."

The same crises make the home more vulnerable to child welfare intervention. Whether one system is a cause or an effect of the other may be impossible to discern, but both can pull children into a spiral of instability.

The Loss of a Child
Cathy Faust barely had a chance to be a mother before Childen's Services decided she was an unfit parent. A survivor of child abuse, she struggled with depression and drugs throughout her youth, right up to the birth of her daughter Jimeaka in 1990. After charging her with neglect, she recalled, Children's Services pressured her to turn her baby over to the care of her sister-in-law.

Without access to legal help or support services, Faust said, she went along with the plan, but three years later, her sister-in-law moved to adopt Jimeaka and terminate Faust's parental rights.

Though Faust maintained some contact with her daughter over the next few years, losing custody stoked her emotional volatility. "I just felt worthless and hopeless," she said. "It was like I was [the] worst person in the world. So it just made me indulge in drugs more, because I'm feeling less than a woman because I can't even be a mother to my child."

Faust was arrested on drug-related charges in 1998. When she met her daughter again after her release from prison six years later, the legal separation had grown into a permanent distance, and they remain estranged.

Faust, now 47, holds down a job at a social service organization and receives regular therapy. But while her life has become more stable, she said, it is not whole.

"That's my only child," she said. "And it's like, OK, my life is together, but it's not together, because that's a piece that's missing. And so much damage that has been done-not just for me, but for her also, for the family."

Recent reform efforts in both child welfare and criminal justice have emphasized preventing mistreatment or neglect and preserving family bonds. Some alternative sentencing programs can route parents into drug treatment rather than prison. Children's Services has stepped up social support services to help children in distressed homes remain with their parents. But advocates say both systems still fail the city's most vulnerable families.

To regain custody of a child in foster care, a birth parent must demonstrate her willingness and ability to care for the child by meeting an array of legal obligations, such as a mandated "service plan" that could include parenting classes or drug treatment, along with periodic review by family court. But Sarah From, director of public policy with the Women's Prison Association, said complying with this can be nearly impossible for a parent behind bars. "The onus is very much on the woman to manage this process of keeping her family together, while she's under the very hard and stressful situation of incarceration," From said.

Children's Services, which must facilitate visits with birth parents, has helped ease the strain of separation with its Children of Incarcerated Parents Program, which provides foster care children with transportation to correctional facilities across the state. In recent years, some prisons have become more accommodating as well. Parenting centers at Rikers and Bedford Hills, for example, allow family visits in a more open, "child-friendly" setting.

Yet, according to the Correctional Association, problems persist at other facilities, including cumbersome security clearance procedures, a lack of social support services for parent-child interaction, and difficulties coordinating visits with child welfare and corrections personnel.

As an advocate, Chambers said she sees many incarcerated parents set back by unresponsive case managers, who are overworked, out of reach or just insensitive to the challenges of incarceration. "I feel like, when a parent is locked up, out of sight, out of mind," she said.

Legal Blockades
Unlike a criminal trial, the family court process centers on assessing a child's well-being, rather than judging evidence of alleged criminal activity. The judge and the city tend to take a preventive approach, focused on broad risks to family safety -- from a lack of medical care to domestic violence.

Shortages of money and staff complicate the legal landscape. Despite recent efforts to make the process more efficient, parent advocates say the system still lacks the personnel and funding it needs to conduct adequate investigations or provide competent counsel.

The hurdles facing imprisoned parents grew higher in the late 1990s with the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act. If a child has spent 15 of the previous 22 months in foster care, the law requires that child welfare authorities file for termination of the birth parent's rights. The aim is to set a time period so the child can find "permanency" instead of foster care -- generally, either reunification with the birth parent or adoption by another family.

Though child welfare agencies can make limited exceptions to the timetable based on family circumstances, the law has tightened pressure on parents to defend their custodial rights. Meanwhile, state policies make no specific exemptions for incarcerated parents, whose sentences typically exceed the time line. According to research led by Columbia University law professor Philip Genty, in the years following the act's passage -- 1997 to 2002 -- termination proceedings for incarcerated parents more than doubled. (*Please note that, before then, young people languished in foster care for years, despite parents making little or no progress).

Criminal justice reform groups have pushed for state legislation to make the foster care timeframe more flexible for incarcerated parents.

The law's aim of promoting stability has backfired, Genty said. "There's no unified, enlightened policy going on," he said. "The correctional system is making its decisions for its own reasons, the foster care system is making its decisions for its own reasons, and nobody's really keeping track of whether that creates inherent tensions."

Prison as the Final Chance
After returning to their communities, many formerly incarcerated women say prison was the necessary "break" that compelled them to change their lives. But to activists, that attests not so much to the positive aspects of incarceration as to a lack of alternatives. Reform advocates argue that neither locking up parents nor removing children from their homes can substitute for community-based programs that intervene to keep families intact before a crisis hits.

"It's not that the transforming factor or moment had to be prison, per se," said Tanya Krupat, a program director at the Osborne Association, a criminal justice-focused service and advocacy organization. "But it was that prison may have been the first time that a woman felt safe, let's say, because she was in a domestic violence relationship, or it's the first time someone could actually detox and think clearly. Then that's a failure of us not having adequate or accessible drug treatment, domestic violence services and other programs."

After Natalie Credell was arrested in 2005 with her boyfriend on drug-related charges, she was placed on bail and ordered into a residential rehabilitation program, designed to house her and her infant son, Nasir, while she got treatment. But Credell, 31, found the program stressful and stifling. After clashing with the counselors, she dropped out and relapsed. She ended up doing 15 months in a federal prison in Virginia, and Administration for Children's Services placed Nasir in the care of Natalie's father.

Like Chambers, Credell hit a wall in prison. "It just dawned on me that I'm a mom now," she said. "This is not where I want to be. This is not the type of mother that I want to be to my son."
Following her release, Credell found her way to Hour Children, a Queens-based organization for women transitioning from prison that offers job training, childcare, and supportive housing. She regained custody of Nasir in March 2007, and the two now live together at Hour Children while she studies to become a drug-treatment counselor.

Credell traces her crisis farther back than her arrest or even her addiction. She first encountered Children's' Services as a child, she recalled, when her mother's drug use prompted a child welfare investigation. She eventually went to live with her grandmother. But her mother's turbulence had started her on a chaotic trajectory.

"The streets taught her," she said, "and this is what she passed on to me."

Now on the outside, Credell hopes to pass something better onto her son. "A mother is a child's world," she said. "So in order to make things happen for him, I have to make things happen for me."

- Michelle Chen is a freelance writer and a native New Yorker. This article is part of a series that will explore the connections between the criminal justice and child welfare systems in New York City. The project is supported by a fellowship from the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Over 1,000 LGBT homeless youth in New York

2009-05-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

Budget Beefs of Youth Advocates
Schindler, Paul. Gay City News, April 2, 2009.

With a recent city census finding that more than 1,000 LGBT youth are homeless in New York and often have to spend the night on the streets, advocates for that population are expressing concerns about a number of budget cuts that could reduce services and even the scarce supply of emergency and transitional beds available.

Green Chimneys, which currently provides 20 of the roughly 100 beds available citywide to homeless youth in settings specifically tailored to provide a safe space for queer youth, is at risk of losing half of that total because of funding cuts at the city Department of Youth and Community Development. DYCD informed Green Chimneys its contract funding those ten beds would not be renewed in the fiscal year beginning July 1, leaving the agency with only state money that pays for the other ten beds.

However, according to Theresa Nolan, a senior staffer at Green Chimneys, the agency has now learned that additional state money going to DYCD might enable it to retain funding for as many as seven of the beds it risked losing.

In the Bronx, the lack of a contract renewal is likely to prove more problematic. For the past three years, the Bronx Community Pride Center, an LGBT-focused facility on East 149th Street, has been the designated borough drop-in center for homeless youth of all backgrounds, receiving funding of $300,000 annually.

According to Lisa Winters, during that period, the Pride Center has experienced about 16,000 youth visits, provided crisis referral and intensive case management to more than 700 youth, LGBT and straight from the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, served more than 5,000 meals, and tested more than 500 for HIV, identifying 29 positive clients.

The loss of the city contract eliminates a quarter of the Pride Center's $1.2 million budget and eliminates its entire youth-specific programming.

Though the Pride Center had received Very Good ratings in each of three annual city audits, it lost out in this year's competitive bidding to Cardinal McCloskey Services, a large social services agency that works in the Bronx, Westchester, and Rockland.

Though it is ostensibly non-sectarian, Cardinal McCloskey obviously has a Catholic background, and its website describes its mission in "support[ing] the sanctity of the family." Winters noted that statement, and said that the Catholic Church's historic hostility to LGBT people would disenfranchise many Pride Center clients.

"My kids won't go to Cardinal McCloskey," she warned.

Ryan Dodge, a spokesman for DYCD, noted that Cardinal McCloskey specifically wrote about serving LGBT youth in its proposal, and added that the Pride Center's loss of the contract was no reflection of the quality of the program it has run.

In Manhattan, Sylvia's Place, the homeless LGBT youth program of the Metropolitan Community Church in Midtown, lost out in its effort to be designated as the Manhattan homeless youth drop-in center.

That contract, which has been held by the Streetwork program run by Safe Horizon, will now go to the Door. Arguing that the Door is not specifically geared to LGBT youth, Lucky Michaels, who directs MCC's Homeless Youth Services, said the Soho agency offered a "warehousing approach" to meeting youth needs.

Other advocates, however, note that the Door has long worked effectively with queer youth among its population.

Michaels said that without the drop-in center contract, Sylvia's Place might not be able to continue providing all 26 overnight spots that it currently offers.

MCC staged a protest in City Hall Park on March 31, where it was joined by homeless youth advocates including Carmen Quinones from Green Chimneys, Nancy Downing from Covenant House, and Margo Hirsch from the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services.

The largest provider of housing for homeless LGBT youth, the Ali Forney Center, meanwhile, announced this week that it is receiving new DYCD and state Department of Health funding of $400,000 in 2009, bringing its total annual budget to $4.3 million. The group added 18 beds this year, and now provides 48 slots - 24 for emergency housing, and the other half for transitional living aimed at preparing youth to find permanent housing on their own

Recession takes its toll on kinship caregivers

2009-04-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

'Grandfamilies' Come Under Pressure
Tough Economy Adds to the Strains on Americans Raising Grandchildren
Lagnado, Lucette. Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2009.

PORT JERVIS, N.Y. -- Until she lost her job last September, Wendy Nocar denied nothing to her granddaughter, Summer, whom she has raised since she was a baby. The blonde 6-year-old was plied with Barbie dolls, clothes, ballet lessons, trips to the mall, and outings to Broadway shows and her favorite restaurant, Red Lobster.

These days, Ms. Nocar, 57, unable to land a job interview much less a job, is worried about stocking the refrigerator and paying her mortgage. She is also fearful of being unable to support Summer, who she says was born addicted to heroin, and who has been in her custody since infancy.

Summer is anxious about her grandmother's situation. "We don't have a lot of money," says the first-grader, whose pictures adorn the cluttered three-bedroom house she inhabits with her grandmother, two cats, a dog and a rabbit named Whiskers. "We need a lot of money; she has to get a job," Summer adds.

Summer Nocar sits on her bedroom floor looking at her shells with her grandmother, Wendy Nocar, in Port Jervis, N.Y.

"She seems to understand a lot more than children do her age," Ms. Nocar says.

Today, more and more children are being raised by their grandparents. These grandparents provide a crucial safety net, allowing children whose parents can't provide for them to remain in families, instead of winding up as wards of the state. But as the recession hits "grandfamilies," that safety net is under stress.

The unemployment rate for older workers is lower than the overall rate. But once they become unemployed, older workers find it harder to land a job and they tend to remain out of work longer than younger workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for those 55 and over has been climbing significantly in recent months; in March, it rose to 6.2% -- the highest it has been since September, 1949, according the bureau.

At the same time, the number of grandfamilies has been growing. In 1970, about 3% of all children under 18 lived in households headed by a grandparent. By 2007, 4.7 million kids -- or 6.5% of American children -- were living in households headed by a grandparent, according to Census Bureau data. This shift was driven by a variety of factors, including more parents hit by drug use, AIDS or cancer, and the large numbers of single parents who, if struck by tragedy, leave children behind.

Not all of these grandparents are sole caregivers, says Kenneth Bryson, a director at Generations United, a Washington nonprofit, "but most are making important contributions," providing "substantial care so that the parents can work or go to school."

Nationwide, about 20% of grandparents or other relatives get grants to help care for children they are raising. Amounts vary; in New York, it averages about $5,000 a year, says Gerard Wallace, an attorney who heads New York's Kinship Navigator program, which helps grandparent caregivers. By contrast, the average cost to the state of one child in non-specialized foster care is $22,000 per year in New York, he says.

If one million children being raised by relatives were to enter foster care, it would cost taxpayers more than $6.5 billion each year, according to a 2005 report by Generations United.

Agencies that work with grandparents are seeing a spike in requests for emergency assistance -- to help pay rent and heating bills or buy winter clothes for children. Ms. Nocar, for instance, is one of many Americans facing both the loss of a job and steep payments for a second mortgage.

A $1 million fund in Washington state to help grandparents is running out of money because of the crush of demand. In Tucson, Ariz., a similar, $147,000 fund that was supposed to last through June was so rapidly depleted in recent months, that it's now gone. In Tampa and Chicago, agencies are helping caregivers who bought homes, but now can't keep up with mortgage payments and risk having no place to live with their grandchildren.

"This is the worst we've ever seen," says Hilari Hauptman, who administers Washington state's fund, established five years ago. "We're hearing of cases where grandfathers who are the families' breadwinner are losing their jobs, of grandmothers who are raising multiple grandchildren and are close to losing their homes to foreclosures."

Allen Bringard, an Everett, Wash., carpet-layer raising a 2-year-old granddaughter and a 15-year-old grandson, came to the attention of Ms. Hauptman's fund in December, as he faced an eviction notice on his apartment. Until recently, Mr. Bringard, 56, had his own small business installing carpets, and he and his wife lived in relative comfort. But as the economy stalled last year and fewer homes were being built, he found himself with less work. "People aren't buying carpets, and that was my trade," he says.

In September, one of his clients failed to pay -- which meant Mr. Bringard couldn't pay the rent. He became "desperate," he says, when he was served with eviction papers, and authorities said they might have to temporarily remove his granddaughter, Shelby, until his situation improved, saying she had to be in a stable home.

"She is the joy of our heart -- losing her would have been like having your own child ripped out of your hands," he says. An emergency grant from the Washington fund enabled him to hold on to the apartment for now. Mr. Bringard says he recently lost his part-time job and is looking for work again.

Losing Summer is Ms. Nocar's greatest fear. She has legal custody, but worries that if she can't find a job -- and can't support Summer -- authorities could take the child away and place her in foster care. "They ask in court, 'how are you going to support this kid?'" she says. "A parent can lose a job and be homeless and still take their child with them, but not a grandparent."

David Jolly, commissioner of the Department of Social Services in Orange County, N.Y., where Ms. Nocar lives, says that while he understands the worries of grandparents, it wouldn't be the practice of his county "to do a removal based on an economic situation." In considering a child's situation, he says "money isn't nearly as important as love."

Summer has lived with Ms. Nocar since she was a month old. Her father is Ms. Nocar's son. Summer was born addicted to heroin, according to papers filed by Ms. Nocar with Family Court in Orange County, in Goshen, N.Y. Ms. Nocar recalls going to see the baby every day in the neo-natal intensive care unit and falling in love with her. State authorities prepared to find the baby a foster home or put her up for adoption.

Ms. Nocar didn't want to lose the child to strangers. In October 2002, she brought Summer home in a bassinet.

"What are you going to do with a baby?" she recalls her own mother saying. "Raise her," she replied.

It was rough going at first, to be a middle-aged, single parent, caring for an infant. At 51, Ms. Nocar found herself getting up in the middle of the night for feedings.

Summer was a delicate child, prone to colds and ear infections. She has also been diagnosed with severe attention deficit disorder, her grandmother says. Medication could possibly help, but Ms. Nocar is adamant: "She has had enough drugs," she says.

In the years when Ms. Nocar was prospering, she liked spoiling the little girl. For Summer's fifth birthday party, she hired a magician. She took her to the mall to shop for "girlie girl" clothes.

At her most recent job, she worked as an engineer designing containers for the food-service industry. Ms. Nocar says she earned about $38,000 a year, enough to get by in her small town. At Christmas, they took a theater outing to New York City, about two hours from home. At least once a week, they went out to dinner. Summer loved to chat up the waitresses of Red Lobster, a restaurant she nicknamed the "Big Crab."

Now, Ms. Nocar can't afford to take her out to eat. She doesn't buy one of Summer's favorite treats -- packages of string cheese -- because of the cost. Summer asked to see the Broadway version of "The Little Mermaid" for Christmas, since she was used to going to shows; her grandmother had to say no. Ms. Nocar's friends now bring over large bags of used clothing.

Ms. Nocar says her granddaughter likes rummaging through the bags and picking out items. But Summer understands the difference between new and hand-me-downs. Asked how her life has changed since her grandmother stopped working, she replies:

"I like to get stuff of my own, like clothes. Now I get stuff from other people."

Why, she is asked?

"You know why," Summer replies. "Because we are poor."

Ms. Nocar has been struggling to find work in a tough market. She doesn't have a formal engineering degree, so she is expanding the kinds of jobs she'll pursue. Her Work Search Record, the form that she must fill out to get unemployment benefits, lists dozens of jobs she has sought -- at employment agencies, consulting firms, temp agencies, Home Depot.

In the column marked "Result of Contact," she scribbles "No jobs," or "Not hiring" or "No response." After sending out more than 55 feelers on-line, by phone or in person, she says she has yet to be called to an interview.

The fact that she is in her late 50s makes her worry whether she is employable. "Is there going to be any use for me?" she says.

Many older workers who lose their jobs drop out of the work force, believing their efforts are hopeless. The number of people 55 and older classified by the federal government as "discouraged" -- meaning they've given up looking for work because they don't think there are any jobs for them -- nearly tripled from December 2007 to December 2008, to 154,000 from 53,000, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Ms. Nocar is contemplating running a day-care center out of her home. Or perhaps selling knick-knacks at a flea market; her house is filled with boxes of items she hopes to sell, including furniture. She's also considering training in the medical field, one of the few sectors with jobs in the area. She has been seeking positions that pay close to what she once made, but says, "if it comes down to it, I will take any job."

Her priority is to keep up her mortgage payments. Ms. Nocar says she bought the house -- built in the 1890s -- in the early 1990s for about $90,000 and had a mortgage payment of about $800 to $900 a month. She decided to refinance to get a lower interest rate but also borrowed money against the house to pay off debts.

Two years ago, Ms. Nocar says, Countrywide Financial approached her with the possibility of getting more cash by taking out another mortgage. She says she resisted, at first. "I didn't want that second mortgage, but they kept calling; they kept telling me 'you could afford it.'[nbsp ]"

"What if I lose my job?" She recalls asking them. She says that she was reassured she had plenty of credit.

A spokesman for Countrywide, which was acquired last year by Bank of America Corp., couldn't discuss specifics but said the loan was made appropriately. "The loan is made based on the current employment. We can't predict the economy, we can't predict whether she will have a job at some point in the future," he said.

Ms. Nocar says she took out a second mortgage in 2007, obtaining about $35,000 in cash. The first mortgage required her to pay 5.875% interest, the second mortgage carried an interest rate of 10.625%.

Her payment now -- of about $1,600 a month -- has been tough to manage since losing her job. Her unemployment, of about $1,450 a month, doesn't cover it, but she has a boarder, which helps. And she receives a grant of $411 from the state to help care for Summer.

Ms. Nocar says she doesn't qualify for food stamps or Medicaid, although Summer is covered by Medicaid. Ms. Nocar says she was forced to drop her own health coverage this month, because she could no longer afford it, and is struggling to pay her utility bill. Though she says she is usually even-keeled, in recent days she has broken down and cried twice. "I am scared now," she says.

One option is to make Summer a ward of the state and become a foster grandparent. Under that arrangement, Summer could still live at home, and the state would pay benefits, upwards of $600 a month, and possibly more because of her struggles with attention deficit disorder, according to Mr. Wallace, of New York's Kinship Navigator program.

But there are drawbacks. Ms. Nocar worries that authorities would be constantly checking on her.

Ms. Nocar meets regularly with other grandparents who are raising grandchildren, as part of a support program of the Cornell University Cooperative Extension, an educational nonprofit in Middletown, N.Y.

And she has turned to her own mother, who is 79, for help. Ms. Nocar's mom, Sally Goldberg, has moved next door. Late last year, she gave her daughter a bond worth $8,400 that Ms. Nocar has since cashed and used to pay household expenses. The great-grandmother also helps support Summer in other ways -- she pays for ballet lessons, buys her the string cheese she loves, and recently purchased a bedroom set for the little girl. "We have a good time together, Summer and I," she says.

As for her own daughter, Ms. Goldberg says: "She is my heroine."

Summer tells her grandmother she has a solution for their recent woes: "I want you to get a lot of money."

6 million children being raised by their grandparents in USA

2009-04-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

Raising Grandchildren in a Recession
Farley, Susan. The New York Times, April 6, 2009.

Every family struggles in a tough economy, but the recession poses unique problems for people raising their grandchildren.

Some six million kids, representing about 8 percent of American children, live with their grandparents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The recession is hitting these “grandfamilies” especially hard, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Today, more and more children are being raised by their grandparents. These grandparents provide a crucial safety net, allowing children whose parents can’t provide for them to remain in families, instead of winding up as wards of the state.

But as the recession hits “grandfamilies,” that safety net is under stress. The unemployment rate for older workers is lower than the overall rate. But once they become unemployed, older workers find it harder to land a job and they tend to remain out of work longer than younger workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate for those 55 and over has been climbing significantly in recent months; in March, it rose to 6.2 percent — the highest it has been since September, 1949, according the bureau….

Many older workers who lose their jobs drop out of the work force, believing their efforts are hopeless. The number of people 55 and older classified by the federal government as “discouraged” — meaning they’ve given up looking for work because they don’t think there are any jobs for them — nearly tripled from December 2007 to December 2008, to 154,000 from 53,000, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.

The medical literature is mixed on the health effects of raising grandchildren. Some studies show that raising your grandchildren takes a toll on your health. Not only is the job physically tiring, but grandparents who are raising young children often suffer from less sleep and exposure to childhood colds and have less time to take care of themselves. At the same time, some grandparents enjoy raising their grandchildren and believe it makes them more active and connected.

To learn more about the recession and grandparents, read the full story, “‘Grandfamilies’ Come Under Pressure.”

NY youth aging out of foster care at risk of homelessness

2009-03-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Study Reveals Harsh Life for Homeless Youth in New York
Bosman, Julie. NY Times, March 9, 2009.

Many homeless youths in New York City are victims of abuse who grew up in foster care or other institutions and now lack jobs, a high school education, birth certificates and adequate health care, according to a study to be released on Tuesday.

And the study, one of the largest-ever examinations of young homeless people in New York, found that their future did not look much better — because they are dangerously isolated from mainstream channels of work, family life and basic schooling.

The study, conducted by Covenant House, which operates shelters for young people, examined 444 people between the ages of 18 and 21 who entered the Covenant House Crisis Center between October 2007 and February 2008.

Forty-seven percent of the group said they had been disciplined physically before entering the shelter, 37 percent said they had been victims of physical abuse, and 19 percent had endured sexual abuse. Forty-one percent said they had witnessed violence in their homes.

The vast majority said they found it difficult or impossible to find a good job. Seventy-eight percent said they were unemployed when they entered the shelter. Among those who had jobs, 41 percent said those jobs were “off the books.”

Kevin M. Ryan, the president of Covenant House, a privately financed agency with facilities in 20 cities nationwide, including Philadelphia, Detroit, Newark and St. Louis, said he hoped the study alerted the public “to the growing crisis of homeless youth in New York City.”

“It is a wake-up call to all of us that we have to be incredibly vigilant on behalf of our kids,” Mr. Ryan said. “Especially in a time of economic crisis, when families are feeling stress and strain that, in many instances, can cause kids to become even more disconnected from school and work and family.”

Adding to the urgency, Mr. Ryan said, was the recent discovery that the number of young homeless people seeking shelter at Covenant House had increased by one-third in the past year.

In 2007, a study by the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, an advocacy group in New York, found that on any given night, roughly 3,800 homeless young people were on the street in New York.

Severe cuts in the state budget are threatening the financing for many programs for runaways and homeless youths across the state, said Margo Hirsch, the executive director of the Empire State Coalition. “Every single one of these programs is going to be affected,” Ms. Hirsch said.

Carol L. M. Caton, a professor of clinical public health at Columbia University and the director of the Columbia Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies, which helped sponsor the 2009 study, said the report exposed at least three major areas that were ripe for further research. They are family relationships, and the events within families that might force a young person out; the impact of institutional experiences like foster care placement; and the challenge of connecting youths to the work force, she said.

“They’re just on the cusp of adulthood,” Dr. Caton said. “And we want to help them transition to adulthood in a way that is positive, so that they won’t go on and continue to have some of these bruising experiences.”

Nearly half of the youths who participated in the 2009 study said they had been arrested, 15 percent had been convicted, and 4 percent were on probation or parole. Twenty-nine percent said they drank alcohol, 20 percent reported using marijuana on a regular basis, and 36 percent said someone in their family used drugs regularly.

Mr. Ryan said he was concerned that after leaving the shelter, where youths typically stay for just under three months, they would enter the adult homeless system, which can be harsh for teenagers — or even worse, they could “slide into gang affiliation, drugs and despair.”

Child abuse prevention is less costly for society

2009-02-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

For Mother and Child at Risk, Care That Includes a Psychologist

Tarkan, Laurie. The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2009.

When she became pregnant, her grandmother offered to buy her a car if she would have an abortion. Other relatives told her the baby would not live to see its first birthday. She was 22, unmarried and had already been hospitalized several times for suicide attempts.

She gave birth to a boy, and when he was 1 week old, the young woman, who spoke on the condition that she not be named, brought him to a pediatric practice at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx for a checkup. A doctor recommended that she join an infant-parent psychotherapy group; instead she agreed to home visits.

In the presence of a psychologist, the young woman wondered aloud if she was sexually arousing the baby when she changed his diaper; said the newborn was “demanding,” “mean” and “hates men”; and eventually revealed that she had been sexually abused as a girl.

“She was mistrusting and so overwhelmed, and needed much more help,” said Rahil D. Briggs, the hospital psychologist who worked with the young woman at her home. After three months of home visits, Dr. Briggs persuaded the mother to join group therapy twice a week.

“Without this bridge, and me having the flexibility to go to her home and have her gain my trust, she never would have come to the group,” the psychologist said. “And if she hadn’t, with her set of risk factors, who knows what would have happened to her son? He is securely attached to her, and in my opinion it’s fairly close to a miracle.”

The group is part of a new effort by the Children’s Hospital to protect young children from psychological damage that can be common in poor families.

Experts say Montefiore’s new program is a rare example of mental health services for children under 5, a population that Evelyn Blanck, co-president of the New York Zero to Three Network, described as “under the radar screen.” Many pediatricians are not trained to recognize psychological problems, and surveys show that parents often complain about physicians’ lack of support for behavioral issues.

“There is really a disconnect between the genuine needs and challenges that are facing our young children and their families and what doctors are providing,” said Dr. Dina Lieser, executive director of Docs for Tots, a nonprofit group that advocates for young children.

The National Academy of Sciences released a report on Friday calling on federal, state and local governments to make prevention of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders in young people “a very high priority.” The report called the current emphasis on treatment once mental disorders emerge as “myopic,” and said that prevention means focusing on people with early symptoms and risks, such as maternal depression or poverty.

At Montefiore’s pediatric practice, the Comprehensive Family Care Center, there is a psychologist on site, and doctors — who are trained to recognize depression in parents — screen each patient for mental health concerns. Of 2,400 children screened since 2005, 1,120 have been recommended for mental health services, and 780 have participated.

The screening program currently costs the city $20,000 to $30,000 a year; therapy is generally covered by Medicaid. The Altman Foundation has covered the $150,000 yearly cost for a separate program, known as Healthy Steps, which since 2006 has screened 250 families at the family care center and provided individual and group counseling.

In Healthy Steps at Montefiore, which is part of a national program, 20 percent of the mothers are teenagers, 27 percent grew up in foster care, 37 percent have parents with mental illness, and more than 10 percent were physically or sexually abused — all risk factors for their babies’ healthy mental and social development, according to Dr. Briggs. Research shows that environmental factors like poverty, homelessness, domestic violence and drugs can lead to depression, anxiety, aggression, poor academic performance, autistic behavior and social or developmental delays.

“If a child is exposed to chronic or toxic stress, his reaction to stress gets turned on way too quickly,” Dr. Briggs said, citing one case in which the mother of a 2-year-old boy wondered whether it would be normal for his tantrums to have intensified after he witnessed the fatal shooting of his father on the street.

According to doctors at Montefiore, a child enrolled in the Healthy Steps program is one-third as likely to score “at risk” for social or emotional developmental problems. Among mothers in the program, depression dropped from 30 percent at the first visit to 6 percent after two months, while 35 percent reported feeling unsupported at the first visit compared with 10 percent at two months.

One recent morning at the hospital’s family care center, a half-dozen mothers sat in a circle as their babies and toddlers played with bubbles on a foldout mat. It seemed like a typical mommy-and-me group, with talk of breastfeeding and gassy babies. But in this group, which was run by a social worker, some of the problems preceded the births: Erika Hernandez, 30, said she had been abused by her stepfather and spent most of her pregnancy homeless; Amanda Agosto, 32, said she had been frequently abandoned by her mother, who she said has bipolar disorder and schizophrenia; others were single and poor.

Though cost is often cited as a reason for not providing mental health services to children, Dr. Andrew D. Racine, director of general pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, said the costs to society only rise if problems are ignored.

“We are seeing the enormous payoffs when you intervene with a child at six or nine months,” said Dr. Racine. “But the ability to intervene or change the trajectory narrows as the kids get older. By the time you get to school-aged children, it already costs a lot more money, time and energy for less returns.”

As an example, Dr. Briggs cited Emily Caraballo, 22, and her son, Hector, who before age 4, she said, had witnessed his father physically and verbally abuse his mother. Before an appointment last fall, Dr. Briggs was summoned by a security guard to the waiting room, where she found Ms. Caraballo “bleeding all over her face because her son has scratched her, and she has him pinned down on the floor so he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“Hector had never received a single ounce of help of any kind — he’s never even been in a school setting because he’s out of control,” Dr. Briggs said. “This is a kid who should have been seeing me since the time he was an infant and this would have been a different story.”

Ms. Caraballo now lives in a domestic violence shelter, and her son is at one of the city’s two psychiatric hospitals that take children under 5. “They say to be a better parent, you need to be strict,” she said. “But Dr. Briggs took the time not only evaluate him, but to look at the circumstances that cause the situation. He developed a rapport with Dr. Briggs, he feels comfortable speaking about what he’s witnessed between me and his father.”

Adults conspire to steal thousands intended for care of foster children

2009-02-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

Foster-care scam grows by $155G
Zambito, Thomas. New York Daily News, Feb. 11, 2009.

Three women took $155,000 in city funds to care for foster kids they never saw, federal prosecutors said Wednesday as their probe into sham adoption subsidies widened.

Mother and daughter Oletha Rhodes and Tammy Moore took $100,000 in welfare subsidies, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.

The money was funneled their way by Nigel Osarenkhoe, a former adoptions supervisor for the city's Administration for Children's Services, prosecutors say.

Rhodes works as a lunchroom aide at Queens Vocational High School and Moore is a seasonal employee for the city's Housing Authority who used to work at ACS.

Also charged was Brenda Towe, a relative of a dead ACS employee, who's accused of accepting $55,000 in bogus subsidies.

Of the three, only Rhodes cared for foster kids, and she took more money than she was entitled to, prosecutors said.

In exchange for kickbacks, Osarenkhoe doled out $578,000 in adoption subsidies to numerous individuals by claiming they needed the cash to care for hard-to-place foster kids, prosecutors say.

Also yesterday, accused co-conspirator Philbert Gorrick, 54, pleaded guilty to accepting $375,000 in illegal payments from former ACS official Lethem Duncan.

Sister Teresa's long legacy for caring for children

2009-02-09T16:50:00.000-08:00

47 years of foster care at N.Y. Foundling Hospital
Richardson, Clem. New York Daily News, Feb. 9, 2009.

The black-and-white photo was among the raft of mementos Sister Teresa Kelly came across while cleaning out her New York Foundling Hospital office.

It shows Kelly, former Mayor Ed Koch, Foundling Hospital President Dr. Vincent Fontana, television weatherman Irv (Mr. G) Gikofsky, several other nuns from Kelly's Sisters of Charity order and 10 children, all with big grins on their faces.

Sister Teresa remembers the moment.

A thunderstorm was raging outside, rattling the walls.

"Mayor Koch looked around and said, 'Don't worry, children, the Mayor is here,'" Sister Kelly recalled. "One of the children said, 'We're not worried; the Sister is here.'"

After a 47-year career with the Foundling Hospital, during which she has been mentor, confidant and surrogate mother to thousands of children, Sister Teresa retired last month.

Her decision had nothing to do with her age, but rather a recent city Administration for Children's Services directive to place fewer foster children in congregate care facilities, said Foundling Communications Director Jennifer Gilbert.

Public acceptance of unwed women having children has also reduced the number of babies being abandoned or put up for adoption.

That has meant fewer children coming into Blaine Hall, the top-floor dormitory facility at Foundling Hospital offices on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan.

The last child living at Blaine Hall was adopted by a Foundling staff member in December.

Sister Teresa's retirement leaves only one Sister of Charity at the Foundling, down from as many as 60.

Sister Teresa, a bartender's daughter who was a Clairol model before joining the Sisters of Charity order in 1957, has been program director at Blaine Hall since it opened in 1974 to house older Foundling children.

She also was a teacher at the Blaine House school, and said the program was the driving force in her life.

"Blaine Hall has had only one program director for more than 34 years," said Foundling Executive Director Bill Baccaglini. "This is one tough Irish woman who doesn't suffer fools. I will miss her."

Sister Teresa has seen the business of foster care change over the years, and not always for the better.

"You used to be able to take a child to the movies or out to the museum or even home with you at night," she said.

"You could sit on the bed with them and hug them and comfort them. Now, you have to be very careful how you deal with a child, after all those abuse cases in the news.

"People don't know how much some children suffer in their lives," she added. "So many of them just need to feel loved. The people who do this kind of work do it because they love children and want the best for them."

WHAT DID working with children for so many years mean to her?

"I had family and I had love," said Sister Teresa, who plans to live with a sister in Westchester County. "People sometimes ask me if I regret not having any children of my own. I tell them I had everything I every wanted."

Some 138 people, including several of her former charges, turned out for Sister Teresa's retirement party, held at Rosie O'Grady's Restaurant in midtown.

She's not sure what she will do next, only that it will have something to do with caring for children.

National poll indicates public ignorance about foster care experience

2009-02-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

National CASA Association Aims to Eliminate the Foster Care Stigma
PR Newswire, Feb. 3, 2009.

When Americans are asked about the kids in the foster care system, a national online Harris Poll, commissioned by the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association, found that 83 percent of adults know little or nothing about the experiences of children in foster care, and nearly half (42 percent) know nothing at all about these children.

When adults do think of children in foster care, only a minority (11 percent) cited positive impressions about these children and the foster care system that serves them. Most often, adults picture foster children as poorly treated, facing a hard life and in need of sympathy; 46 percent of knowledgeable adults believe these youth in foster care face unsuccessful futures.

However, when you talk to the youths themselves, you see an entirely different picture. A national focus group study of 50 current and former foster youth, also commissioned by the National CASA Association, found these youth see themselves as uniquely empowered by overcoming adversity, determined not to repeat the mistakes of their birth parents and optimistic about their futures.

"Yes, I have been through a lot of hell and high water, but because of that I am a stronger person. I'm still standing," said a male Dallas foster youth who participated in the study.

Despite the lack of awareness by the general population of the foster care system, 87 percent agree that foster care should be a national priority. Furthermore, 73 percent of adults believe in their potential to positively influence the lives of foster children.

"These are people we -- and our foster youth -- so desperately need," said National CASA CEO Michael Piraino. "We know that when a CASA volunteer is involved, children are 95 percent less likely to re-enter the foster care system. There are people out there that are willing to help, they just don't know how."

When asked what foster children want they say it's simple -- "we just want someone to be there to listen. We trust people who are willing to listen to us."

"There are a number of ways caring adults can become involved in the lives of these young people, not only as foster parents, but also as mentors or CASA volunteers," said Piraino. "By becoming a CASA volunteer adults provide the stability that foster youth often lack. That stability helps these children transition from care into successful adulthood and helps ensure that each child has the opportunity to reach their fullest potential."

The results of the two studies were presented by Piraino in January, in New York to an audience of national media, National CASA staff, and various members of the child welfare community. Supporting Piraino was a panel of foster youth advocates, featuring best-selling author and long-time CASA supporter, Anna Quindlen; National CASA spokesperson and TV-personality Judge Glenda Hatchett; and former foster youth and author Julia Charles.

Foster care and unaffordable child care?

2009-02-09T11:14:00.003-08:00

Working mom's heartbreak: Home-alone son’s is back from foster care, but she needs help
Block, Dorian. NY Daily News, Feb. 6, 2009.

Lillian Lucas-Dixon has her 7-year-old son Juan back in her arms again.

But the reunion may be short-lived.

Juan - the youngest of her 10 children, most of whom are grown - was put into foster care because she left him home alone while she worked.

She is thrilled he's back, but still does not have anyone to watch him while she works at night as a token booth clerk.

"I started crying. I couldn't believe he was finally coming home. Seven weeks and 20 hours. That's a long time," said Lucas-Dixon, 52.

Juan was taken away by the Administration for Children's Services Dec. 14, after he told a school guidance counselor that he was left home alone.

ACS made a surprise visit to Lucas-Dixon's Co-op City apartment during what she said was an hour-long gap between her leaving for work and her daughter arriving to watch Juan.

Lucas-Dixon had a tearful reunion with Juan on Monday, bringing him home to a Christmas tree, stockings and presents that were still waiting for him.

He happily tore the wrapping off gifts that included several chess and checkers sets, a pair of King Kong gloves and a red bicycle.

Still, Lucas-Dixon continues to worry; she fears he will be taken away again if she can not arrange continuous child care.

ACS spokeswoman Sheila Stainback said she could not comment on specific cases, but that if a working parent cannot find child care, the agency works to "find alternative resources and help that parent make a plan to ensure the child's safety while the parent works."

ACS gave her a list of child-care providers, Lucas-Dixon said, but they were unaffordable, located in Manhattan or did not offer service that would cover her night and weekend shifts.

She makes too much money to qualify for subsidized child care.

Lucas-Dixon's dilemma is one thousands of the city's single parents and two-parent working families face, with high child care costs in a tough economy, said Mary Pulido, executive director of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She pointed out the dangers of leaving a child home alone, including poisoning or fire inside, and strangers outside.

"It's really understandable that the pressures right now, especially with a tight economy, may prompt some parents, even responsible parents, to leave a child under 12 alone," she said.

"But it can't take the place of placing a child at risk. Single parents especially need to make more of an effort to turn over every single stone to find alternatives."

But Lucas-Dixon says she is running out of stones to turn over. She is considering sending Juan to California again to live with his 29-year-old sister and her family, but said it breaks her heart to be separated from him.

Bridges to Health for foster care youth

2009-02-02T15:53:00.001-08:00

Trauma treatment for foster kids gets reprieve: A new state program aimed at helping foster youth in the near and long term is spared the budget ax
McCormack, Lindsey. City Limits, Jan. 26, 2009.

The boy had been screaming for over an hour, and his foster mom was beginning to panic. She didn’t know what had sparked the attack, and already the neighbors were calling to complain about the noise. At this late hour, most foster parents would have no choice but to dial 911 and have the child rushed to a hospital.

Instead, the mother called one of the boy’s new caseworkers, an on-call specialist in emotional disturbances. Soon the worker arrived at her Bronx apartment, helped calm the child and put him to bed. The two women stayed up late discussing ways to help the boy beat his demons, a talk they would continue in their monthly meetings with his caseworker.

Kids who foster families find too tough to handle usually end up in institutional care—at the beginning of last year, nearly a quarter of the 26,199 children in state custody were living in group homes or specialized medical facilities. Despite an increasing emphasis on shifting care to a family setting, achieving permanency is rarely easy.

By avoiding a lengthy hospital stay, the boy and his foster mother made an important step towards stability, according to Roslyn Murov, a child psychiatrist and medical director at Abbott House, a social services agency.

Abbott House is one of 10 agencies to participate in the first year of Bridges to Health, a state program that connects children in foster care to a rich array of health services, thereby improving their chance of finding permanent homes.

The program targets children with disabilities and emotional trauma, who are at high risk of being institutionalized. “Many of our kids were already in foster homes, but their families were overwhelmed with taking care of them,” Murov said. “B2H has given us new choices for keeping kids in families.”

For the shapers of New York’s foster care system, helping children overcome emotional trauma increasingly means being there for the caretakers, too. Ten years ago, when Mimi Weber joined the policy team of the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), she observed two ways the system was failing families:

First, when a foster child was adopted or returned to his birth family he would lose his Medicaid, making it more likely that recurring problems would drive him back into state custody.

Second, medical interventions tended to target the child exclusively, without taking into account the needs of adult caregivers.

Weber began consulting with the heads of child welfare agencies, pediatricians and child psychiatrists like Murov. All agreed that traditional Medicaid coverage of doctor visits and medication did not equip parents to deal with their charges’ complex problems.

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, some 30 percent of children in foster care have severe emotional, behavioral or developmental problems, often from years of neglect or abuse by their own parents. The consequences of early abuse are so complex that psychiatrists recently coined a new term for it, "developmental trauma."

Weber describes the condition as a series of neurological gaps and tears, a condition more severe than the disorders frequently ascribed to foster kids: attention deficit, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress. “We think medication might be part of filling those gaps, but clearly it can’t be the only treatment,” said Weber. “We tried to think about serving the child and family in a holistic way, so the family understands how to treat the child.”

Launched during the brief Spitzer administration, Bridges to Health takes advantage of a waiver in federal Medicaid law allowing states to create community care for people with disabilities. The program started with 300 children from Rochester, Albany, and New York City, with the goal to reach 3,305 children statewide within three years.

While some children have medical conditions like cancer or HIV, and others have permanent developmental disabilities, most fall into the category of severe emotional disturbance. In New York City, 182 of the 220 children currently enrolled in Bridges to Health are there because of emotional problems, says Jodi Saitowitz, who coordinates the program at ACS.

The program revolves around an individualized health plan that caseworkers devise in collaboration with children, their foster parents, and sometimes birth parents. The health plan can include up to 14 components, ranging from socialization training to an in-school advocate. Many offerings, such as 24-hour crisis assistance and planned respite care, help parents care for disabled children over the long haul.

Critically, Bridges to Health caseworkers carry a maximum of six cases, far below the average 15 to 20 cases handled by most foster caseworkers. And because the goal is to support permanent family placement, children keep their benefits as long as they need them, up to their 21st birthday.

This mixed service model, combined with intensive home support for parents, is unique in the country. Think tanks are beginning to take notice: Weber and her team were recently invited to apply for an innovations award at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Workers involved also report promising outcomes. Saitowitz recalled the case of one woman who was on the verge of giving up her foster son after his outbursts in school forced her to leave work for days in a row. Bridges to Health arranged for a special needs advocate to model appropriate behavior for the boy in class, and helped his mom and teachers devise a progress plan. The boy was able to stay with his foster family.

“This program is about making personal connections in intimate settings, as opposed to handing parents an emergency number that connects them to some random stranger,” said Saitowitz, a former social worker. “We’ve been crying out for something like this for years.”

Such intensive services do not come cheap—Bridges to Health costs about $52,000 per child per year—but they are a bargain compared to the average $185,000 price tag for residential care. In addition, the federal government foots half the bill. Nonetheless, last August, amidst a darkening fiscal climate, the state proposed freezing the funding. “We were in disbelief,” said Weber. “The hardest part was telling families we might not be there tomorrow.”

OCFS protested that hundreds of children in the process of joining the program would have to be cut off.

“Foster children are never number one on most funders’ priorities,” said Elizabeth Schnur, senior vice president at the Jewish Child Care Association, which is the largest Bridges to Health provider in New York City. “This is the first program in a long time that came around to make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of children.”

A lobbying effort ensued, drawing on the support of State Senator Tom Duane and Assembly Member Micah Kellner, both of Manhattan. In December the governor’s budget restored Bridges to Health funding for 610 children, the original enrollment goal for this fiscal year. For the next two fiscal years, the state will spend $61 million on the program; assuming the fiscal situation improves, enrollment will resume sometime in 2011. The goal of reaching 3,305 children is now set for 2013, costing approximately $84 million.

Even if that goal remains steady—and the state’s budget health seems to decline every month—it falls short of the total need. Weber estimates that there are about 9,000 disabled foster children in New York who could qualify for the program. While service providers say they are grateful for the reinstated state support, Kellner and Duane continue to push for broader funding for up to 10,000 slots.

“We can’t afford to leave the most at-risk kids out in the cold,” says Kellner. “It’s better to spend the money to help these kids now, as opposed to condemning them to a lifetime of isolation and institutionalization.”

NY data reveals females vulnerable to domestic violence

2008-12-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

NY: Family violence main cause of female homicides
Associated Press, Dec. 24, 2008.

New York homicide data show most female victims died last year at the hands of somebody in the family.

Division of Criminal Justice Services researchers said 87 of the 157 female victims of murder or manslaughter statewide in 2007 were slain by a partner, parent or some other relation. By contrast, 48 of the state's 643 male homicide victims died in domestic violence, according to the report issued Wednesday.

"Domestic violence often occurs out of sight and, historically, out of mind," Gov. David Paterson said. He called it "a blight on our society."

Paterson this year signed into law a measure expanding the definition of "same family or household" to include unrelated individuals who were involved in an intimate relationship with the victim, regardless of whether they had ever lived together. Another new measure authorizes criminal mischief charges when an abuser damages jointly owned property. A third makes it a crime to prevent someone from seeking emergency assistance by disabling or removing a telephone or other communication device.

Despite the current state fiscal crisis, Paterson promised victims won't be abandoned and public safety won't be sacrificed.

"I will be relying on this report, and its troubling findings, as we consider new strategies to address domestic violence," he said.

While noting the crime rate statewide has dropped 33 percent in a decade and spending for public safety programs grew 54 percent, Paterson has carved out various exceptions for law enforcement from his cuts in the current state budget and proposal for 2009-2010. He proposed $727 million total spending for the state police next year, up 5 percent, and ongoing staffing of 4,939 sworn troopers.

Amy Barasch, executive director of the Governor's Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, said 80 percent of homicides by intimate partners nationally were preceded by other domestic violence.

The data should help them work with police and victims' advocates "to strengthen initial responses" to domestic incidents, she said.

Another state report adding data about hot line phone calls, orders of protection, child welfare cases and related crimes should be out by the end of January. It will be used to target services at communities with the greatest need, Barasch said. "We want to get services to people before they become a homicide statistic," she said.

Statewide, authorities in 31 counties reported no domestic homicides, while 17 reported no homicides at all. The 800 total statewide was down about 14 percent from 926 a year earlier, while domestic homicides totaled 135 last year, up from 133.

The historical data on domestic cases is "a little squishy," division spokesman John Caher said. "It all depends what the cops put in the report." If a case wasn't flagged by police as domestic violence, it didn't turn up in that state data. The 2007 data include family definitions that include, for example, unmarried partners, and the report's researchers examined every 2007 homicide to verify it, he said.

Of the 36 children killed by domestic violence last year, 20 were boys and all but three were under the age of 5. Most were infants.

Domestic homicides have been dropping since 1994, coinciding with passage of the Violence Against Women Act but mostly among men, Barasch said. The addition of services for abused women has reduced self-defense killings that follow years of domestic abuse. "Women know they don't have to resort to violence," she said.

While it makes sense to simply avoid violent or deadly people as intimate or parenting partners, Barasch said that's often unclear at first.

"Folks who are abusive can have an appealing side to their nature and show that side to attract a partner." Later, once abuse starts, victims often don't want to believe the person they love is hurting them, or they may feel trapped for complicated emotional, economic, parental and other reasons.

Also, popular culture can make obsessive and controlling behavior, fairly unhealthy yet common among abusers, sound OK.

"I think we all get very mixed messages in what love looks like," she said.

Hopes for Higher Education for foster care alumni

2008-12-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

Dr. Deborah Sims receives NY Beauty of Education Award
Press Release, Dec. 15, 2008.

Dr. Deborah Sims was one of 10 recipients of the 2008 Maybelline New York Beauty of Education Award. The award recognizes women using the power of education to make a difference.

Dr. Sims was selected by Maybelline for founding Hopes for Higher Education, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving college access for the youth aging out of the foster care system and into higher education.

Dr. Sims earned a doctorate from Capella University's School of Harold Abel School of Psychology in 2006. Capella University ( www.capella.edu), is an accredited* online university that has built its reputation by providing quality online education for working adults.

Dr. Sims, herself a product of foster care, operated and managed the Hopes for Higher Education while pursuing her online PhD.

"I found balancing both to be a very positive experience," commented Dr. Sims. "I knew that I wanted to conduct my research in this area, so I was very eager to combine the two activities that I'm most passionate about--my education and helping the kids aging out of foster care."

Her organization will receive a $10,000 grant to support their educational cause along with the opportunity to be showcased in a national ad in Essence Magazine.

NY journalist cares about foster care

2008-11-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

In foster care, there's always room for one more
Caring families can help rescue kids and their parents
Cleary, John. Elmira Star-Gazette, Nov. 15, 2008.

This week, I became a father again. Twice.

My wife and I finalized our third and fourth adoptions this week. Two foster children, girls ages 3 years and 15 months, have permanently joined our family. We now have six children.

It is, of course, a joyous thing. Our new youngest daughter has lived with us since birth, her new older sister for almost all of her life. To have them become, officially, part of our family is a cause for celebration. We are happy the adoptions could be finalized in November, National Adoption Month.

But it is bittersweet, too. We know now our family is complete. We don't have the space or, honestly, the inclination to adopt any more children. We have been foster parents for nearly seven years, having cared for more than two dozen children. With our family having grown so much, taking in more children is difficult. We may be available for temporary respite care or the occasional emergency case, but I think our days of long-term foster care are behind us, at least until our own children are older.

Foster care has been such an integral part of our family life, we don't quite know how to feel. Except for brief vacations or time between cases, this weekend we are without foster children for the first time in our married life. We feel we are ending the first chapter of our life as a family, and while we're excited to see what comes next, we'll miss the challenges we're leaving behind.

Foster care has been the most exhilarating, draining, uplifting, depressing, fun and frustrating experience of my life. Above all, it has been illuminating. We've learned some valuable lessons.

We've come to believe no case is hopeless. We have met families with enormous challenges to overcome and have seen them do it. We've known addicts who have gotten clean, victims who have escaped abusive relationships, homeless parents who have found suitable housing and mental health patients who have made great strides in treatment. We have seen children we were certain were heading to adoption go home and live happy, safe lives.

When it happens, it is beautiful to see.

I've learned all children crave a measure of control. I believe what motivates a lot of a child's behavior, good and bad, is the desire to demonstrate, to themselves or others, that they have some control over their lives. Children, especially those in foster care, have little say in where they live, what they eat, when they sleep and what they do. So they try to control the things they can, often in antisocial ways. A lot of problems, I think, can be resolved or prevented by seeking an understanding of the child's need for control.

Most of all, we've learned the system that cares for these children can work. It requires the active advocacy of caseworkers, judges who are compassionate but firm, law guardians who care and foster parents who aren't content to watch children get lost in the shuffle.

You can join that team. Call your county Department of Social Services and ask how you can open your home to a child. You will never do anything as rewarding as helping a child in need.

John P. Cleary is a freelance writer from Elmira, NY

Need for Post Adoption Sibling Visitation

2008-11-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

Adoption gives birth to a new family for children in foster care
Rulhmann, Dandrea. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Nov. 13, 2008.

As a Family Court judge, I have the privilege of co-chairing, with Judge Gail Donofrio, Monroe County's celebration of National Adoption Day on Friday. National Adoption Day represents a day of promise and hope for 1,300 New York children in foster care awaiting permanent homes.

The chaos created by substance abuse, unaddressed mental illness or physical violence has left these children without safe, permanent homes. By definition these children have lost much, not the least of which is their connection to their biological brothers and sisters.

For me, growing up with three sisters has created a lifelong safety net, providing constant friends, confidants and support. Indeed a person's relationship with his or her siblings typically lasts longer than many other relationships, including those with parents. Not surprisingly, a child in foster care often reveals in court that he desperately misses his biological siblings.

New York Family Court regulations encourage contact between biological siblings before adoption, recognizing the importance of the sibling bond in developing a child's identity and well-being. Many adoptive parents unselfishly chose to continue that contact after the child's adoption is finalized. Some by acts of unconditional love adopt more than one child from the same biological family, refusing to separate them.

Yet these are real families, with myriad problems. Unfortunately, risks to health and safety may prevent an ongoing relationship between a child and his biological siblings. In these cases, adoptive brothers and sisters fill the developmental and emotional void for the adopted child. Adoptive siblings become family. In this way, adoption can bring unfathomable promise for every child in foster care.

Ruhlmann is a Monroe County Family Court judge and guest essayist

New York to Host National Adoption Day 2008

2008-11-14T16:14:00.001-08:00

Events in all 50 States to Kick-off in New York; 151 New York City Children to be Connected to Loving, Permanent Families
Press Release from National Adoption Day Coalition, Nov. 13, 2008.

On November 15, 2008, hundreds of communities in all 50 states will hold courtroom celebrations to finalize more than 4,000 adoptions of children from foster care, bringing the total number of finalized adoptions as part of National Adoption Day activities to more than 25,000.

Every year, in November, hundreds of judges, attorneys, adoption agencies, adoption professionals and child advocates volunteer their time to finalize adoptions of children from foster care and celebrate all families who adopt.

New York will host the national celebration as it has led the country with innovative and successful programs to promote foster care adoptions, annually completing about 5,000 of these adoptions throughout the state.

As one of the original National Adoption Day participating cities, New York will host the national press conference to address the state of foster care and national trends in foster care adoption. The press conference will begin at 9 a.m. in the ceremonial courtroom on the first floor of the Queens Family Court.

The press conference will be followed by the adoptions of 151 children from foster care into permanent, loving, forever families.

Participants include:
- Rita Soronen, Executive Director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and a founding sponsor of National Adoption Day
- Judge Joseph M. Lauria, Administrative Judge, New York City Family Court
- Ortiz-Torres-Fonseca, new adoptive family

"Today marks a milestone in America as we celebrate the over 3,500 children that will go home tonight with their forever families -- children who have waited for this moment in some cases for years. Our hearts are filled with joy for these children and for the power that this day has in raising awareness of the overwhelming number of children still waiting for a loving home," said Rita Soronen, Executive Director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a founding sponsor of National Adoption Day.

"We are honored that 25,000 children have now permanently joined families through our national celebrations. Experiencing the joy of National Adoption Day reminds us all of what we can accomplish and drives us further toward the goal of finding a home for every child."

"While we are first and foremost a Court of reunification, we are committed to permanency through adoption for our children and families when reunification is not appropriate. New York is proud to champion foster care adoption on National Adoption Day and every day throughout the year," said Judge Joseph M. Lauria, Administrative Judge of the New York City Family Court.

"In 2007, we finalized over 1,644 adoptions from foster care in our courts citywide, providing safe, loving and permanent homes for our deserving children. And, on National Adoption Day, we will be delighted that 151 more children who were waiting in foster care will go home knowing they are part of a permanent bond, knowing they have a family."

Right now, 129,000 children are waiting in the foster care system legally and permanently separated from their biological parents. Through no fault of their own, these children enter foster care because of abuse, neglect and/or abandonment. Unless they are connected with adoptive parents they will not only lose the opportunity for family joys as simple as Thanksgiving dinner, but they will also be at an increased risk for being undereducated, unemployed, homeless and/or involved in substance abuse or criminal activity.

Since 1987, the number of children in foster care has nearly doubled, and the average time a child waits for an adoptive family is more than three years. Many move to different families more than three times while in the system and are separated from siblings. Each year, nearly 26,000 of these youth will just end up leaving the system when they turn 18 with no family to support them in the future.

The National Adoption Day Coalition works tirelessly throughout the year with hundreds of communities and thousands of volunteers to dispel the myths about adopting from foster care and to raise awareness about the 129,000 children in need of adoptive families. The day also builds collaboration among local adoption agencies, courts and advocacy organizations and communicates the availability and need for post-adoptive services.

In Syracuse, New York, the Fifth Judicial District and Onondaga County will be hosting its largest National Adoption Day Celebration ever. Local Adoption Agencies as well as Onondaga County Department of Social Services will be on hand to provide information with regard to becoming Foster Parents as well as adopting. Following the ceremony, the private adoptions will take place with gift bags going to the children being adopted.

National Adoption Day is sponsored by a coalition dedicated to improving the lives of children, including The Alliance for Children's Rights, Casey Family Services, Children's Action Network, The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and the Freddie Mac Foundation.

The Fostering Connection (TFC)

2008-11-14T15:56:00.001-08:00

The Fostering Connection is a New York City program that offers lifelong therapy to current and former foster children for free. For more information, please call 212-255-8895.

This organization has been facilitating effective, long-term relationships between foster care youth and alumni and professional therapists in the New York area since 2001.

The Fostering Connection (TFC) evolved from a New York social action project called The Children’s Psychotherapy Project. TFC incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2004.

To continue providing services, The Fostering Connection relies on the generous contributions of foundations, corporations and individuals, as well as their volunteers.

Times Square Vigil Focusing on Homeless Youth

2008-11-12T17:39:00.001-08:00

Press Release: Plight of Homeless Youth Will be Focus of Nov. 20 Times Square Vigil
Nov. 12, 2008

NEW YORK-- Covenant House International is releasing its First Annual Report Card on the US Homeless Youth Crisis, and gives a bleak outlook for their future. America's kids in crisis will be the focus of the 18th Annual Candlelight Vigil for Homeless Youth on Thursday, November, 20, 5:30 pm, in Times Square.

"Over 750,000 young people in the US are living and dying on our streets every year. We were able to help 70,387 homeless youth last year, 7% more than the year before, but this is still not enough, more needs to be done by all of us," explains James White, interim president and chief operating officer for Covenant House International, the largest privately funded agency in the Americas helping homeless kids.

"Our First Annual Report Card on the US Homeless Youth Crisis finds that the number of homeless and impoverished youth is growing and their outlook is bleak," says White. The report card examines 11 key indicators affecting children, including: population growth, poverty rates, employment opportunities, high school drop-out rates, health coverage, dental health, the foster care system, juvenile justice, arrests, substance use and death rates.

"18- to 24-year-olds make up the highest percentage of individuals living in poverty and they are twice as likely to be unemployed. Many of these kids are aging out of foster care at rates 30% higher than we typically see," says White adding, "One-third of the homeless kids helped by Covenant House come directly from foster care. The rest come from environments of abuse, neglect and other at-risk situations."

According to information gathered by Covenant House, once a kid becomes homeless, that youth is at a much greater risk for becoming incarcerated. The number of recent arrests of 18- to 24-year-olds has increased for prostitution (17%), drug violations (19%), weapons charges (25%) and vagrancy (28%). These kids also are at much greater risk for premature death by homicide or suicide. 5,000 homeless youth die from assault, illness and suicide each year.

"We want people to be outraged by this bleak situation. We want them and our nation's leaders to change this situation. It can be done. At Covenant House we've been changing the lives of homeless kids for 35 years by giving them guidance, transitional housing, healthcare, education and job training. Many of our kids go from the streets to college. They are good kids who have had some rough breaks in life and now just need a chance to help themselves," says White.

Homeless youth being helped by Covenant House will be telling their stories and performing with Broadway stars at the 18th Annual Candlelight Vigil for Homeless Youth on Thursday, November, 20, 5:30 pm, in Times Square.

Additional vigils will be held at other Covenant House sites, churches, colleges and via the Virtual Candlelight Vigil Web site: www.igniteadream.org

The Times Square Vigil will be hosted by Sunny Cummings Hostin, CNN Legal Analyst & Managing Director at Kroll Inc., a private investigation and security firm. The vigil also will feature: Jim White, Bruce Henry, executive director of Covenant House Institute, and Broadway stars Lawrence Clayton (Bells Are Ringing, It Ain't Nothin but the Blues, The Civil War, Once upon a Mattress, High Rollers Social Pleasure Club, and Dreamgirls) and Capathia Jenkins (Fame Becomes Me, Look of Love, Caroline or Change, and Civil War).

Nasdaq and Reuters will air vigil graphics while ABC will air the vigil live on their Times Square jumbotrons during the event. MTV and Invision will create a live Internet feed for the vigil.

Founded in 1972, Covenant House International is the largest privately funded agency in the Americas helping homeless kids, providing 24/7 crisis care and ongoing support at 21 facilities, NINELINE (1-800-999-9999) and www.covenanthouse.org.

Doctors as role models for foster children

2008-10-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

Foster kids: in need of connection, and time to grieve
Ryan, Jeff. Contemporary Pediatrics. Oct. 12, 2008.

No one would try to set up a brand new widow or widower on a blind date. It’s too soon: the bereaved spouse needs time to grieve and process the loss before they can try to establish a new bond with someone else.

A child losing the care of parents or guardians, due to death or inability to care, experiences a similar type of loss, and needs a similar time to grieve. But too often they don’t get it, and are expected to immediately start thriving with a pair of foster parents. If they don’t, they get flagged with “oppositional defiant disorder.”

This, according to Francine Cournos, MD, who spoke at Saturday’s plenary session, is one of the few times where the medical establishment overcares for a child going through the foster care system. Cournos is an expert in the system in two ways, as a medical professional and as a child who experienced the system herself.

Cournos’s father died when she was three, and her mother when she was 11. The grandmother she was living with couldn’t provide care for her and her siblings, and her aunts and uncles didn’t want the responsibility either. She entered the foster care system “stunned, then angry” at her remaining family.

She spoke powerfully to the audience, using the voice of “adaptive” children in foster care. “We as foster children need our connection to you,” she said. “We are coming from a world of betrayal, and long for adults who are trustworthy…We may not show it: saying no is the one power of the helpless. But don’t be fooled: we want to connect to you. Our rejection is merely anger.”

She added that “you don’t need to be more than you are,” stressing that foster parents and pediatricians do not have to single-handedly make up for all the deficits of the child’s parents and (sometimes) previous foster parents.

The decades have definitely improved the lives of foster children. When Cournos was in the system, children weren’t considered able to have mood or anxiety disorders, not even depression for how their life had turned out. Still, some pediatricians try to cram in many tests during placement day, when children are already traumatized. This might exacerbate a case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Cournos recalled a pediatrician ophthalmologist colleague of hers, who realized he was the only constant for some of the foster kids in his practice. She had a similar role model: her own pediatrician growing up. “He was the nicest man in the world,” she recalled, and he was extra nice to foster kids. She said she might be a doctor when she grew up, and he believed her.

All of this despite only seeing him once every six months, for her well visits.

"My future is flying toward me"

2008-10-13T09:20:00.001-07:00

After spending much of her life in foster care, Star Diaz turns 21 this month--and will have to make a home of her own
New York Times Upfront, Sept. 22, 2008.

Whenever my parents come up in a conversation, I want to lie. I want to say all of us live together in one big house. My mother sings while she's folding laundry. My father watches TV. And my brothers and sisters are always in my room, taking my things.

But the truth is, when I was 13 years old, my father killed my mother at a motel in New York City. The six youngest of my eight brothers and sisters were adopted, and I don't know where they are. The last time I saw them was when we buried my mom.

My oldest sister, Jeanette, and I grew up in different foster homes, but we're close now. Jeanette, who's 26, knows how to move on and plan for her future. She works as a home health aide and makes sure her kids look good for school.

But I feel like I'm stuck in the past, while my future is flying toward me. I'm about to age out of foster care, when I turn 21 on September 27. At that point, I have to move out of my current foster home--the sixth foster home I've been in since I was 7.

MY FAMILY
Growing up without your mother and father, you ask yourself all the time: Where do I belong? Who loves me? You just never stop asking yourself those questions.

To me, it meant something to belong to somebody, even if my parents weren't perfect. My mother and father drank a lot. My father was a boxer in Puerto Rico and turned his fists on my mother and on us. The truth is, I would forgive anyone, even my father, if it meant they would just come through for me.

My caseworker told me a lot of foster kids end up in homeless shelters when they age out of the system. And if she was trying to scare me, I'm feeling it.

The thing is, when I try to imagine having a home--with comfy leather sofas, a fluffy bed, and lots of food in my fridge--it seems like a fantasy. It just doesn't seem real.

One night, I walked by the hotel for homeless people where I once stayed with my mother. I realized I do not want to end up there, so I have to pull myself together and focus on the future.

Last spring, I got a chance to tell my story on the radio. After my story aired, a listener called in and said she wanted to hire me. So now, four days a week after my G.E.D. program, I do clerical work at a law firm in New York.

Having the job means long days and not much time for fun. But it also means I'm eligible for public housing when I leave foster care. This summer, I got my own apartment, and I hope that will be the first step in getting my life on track.

BY STAR DIAZ, 20
This essay is adapted from Star Diaz's story for Radio Rookies, a series produced by WNYC Radio in New York.

How could CDSC not know that criminal checks were required?

2008-10-13T06:09:00.001-07:00

Kids agency skips crime checks
Lucadamo, Kathleen. New York Daily News, March 26, 2008.

A BROOKLYN NONPROFIT paid by the city to help abused children didn't do criminal background checks on workers and couldn't prove caseworkers were doing their job, the city controller's office says.

The Child Development Support Corp., which gets more than $4 million from the city, failed to conduct criminal checks on 95% of its employees - even though its contract required them to, according to the controller's audit.

The organization provides services - including day care, job training and substance abuse programs - to 100 families in Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville.

Caseworkers at times didn't make required contact with the families and didn't "adequately monitor" the services clients were receiving, the audit claims.

Controller William Thompson blamed the city Administration for Children's Services, which oversees CDSC, for not keeping better tabs on child welfare agencies.

His findings come as ACS is relying more than ever on preventative programs to stop child abuse.

"If they [CDSC] are entrusted to help families keep children out of foster care, are they doing this job? Nobody knows," said Thompson. He urged ACS to "pay attention to those who are working for you."

ACS spokeswoman Sheila Stainback charged that Thompson used "largely old data" and said "CDSC has made marked improvement in recent months." The audit covered July 2005 to June 2007.

CDSC does complete extensive checks on their employees but didn't believe criminal background checks were required, said its executive director, Marcia Riddick.

Since the audit did not conduct its own background checks, it is not known whether any of the workers have a criminal background.

This law might save lives

2008-10-13T06:07:00.001-07:00

Child Welfare Tightens Law On Removal
Kaufman, Leslie. New York Times, May 15, 2008.

New York City has enacted a tough new policy that allows the authorities to remove newborns from their parents' homes in all but an "extraordinary instance" if the parents previously had children taken from their custody and their case is still open.

John B. Mattingly, the city's commissioner of children's services, announced the more aggressive approach during a City Council budget hearing on Tuesday at which he faced questions on his agency's role in the death of Pablo Paez, an 11-week-old boy whose older sibling had been removed from the same home at age 3 months, a year earlier.

The children's mother, Kiana Paez, a 23-year-old drug addict, was charged on April 25 with beating Pablo to death. Child welfare workers had been in frequent contact with Ms. Paez since the first baby was placed in foster care because of violence in the home, but they did not try to remove Pablo.

Mr. Mattingly said that the new policy was influenced by the Paez case, but that he had been considering the changes -- a natural outgrowth of other changes he had made at the agency -- for a long time. The policy, which had been toughened in 2006, was officially revised again on April 21, 18 days after the baby's injuries were discovered.

"When I got here three and a half years ago, the assumption was the child would stay in the home," Mr. Mattingly said in a telephone interview. "Most of us in the country have the view that if older siblings are in foster care, and the court has affirmed that they are at substantial risk of harm, it makes very little sense to make the opposite assumption about a 6-pound baby coming into the home."

Even under the new policy, removals will not be automatic. When caseworkers learn of a pregnancy, they are required to have a safety conference with family members, lawyers or advocates to evaluate the risk for the new baby. If they feel a new child should stay in the mother's home, a borough supervisor will have to sign off on the decision. Otherwise, the agency will initiate the court proceedings required to remove any child from the parents' care.

"The assumption should be we are going for removal," Mr. Mattingly said. "This is a very serious matter, and only the highest authority can make a decision not to remove the child."

City officials could not say whether any babies have been removed under the new regulations, but they estimated that 150 to 200 infants a year were born into families with children in foster care.

Several child-welfare experts said on Wednesday that New York's new regulations were among the most aggressive they had seen.

"The presumption is toward keeping a baby home unless there is imminent risk," said Anne Marie Lancour, director of state projects at the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the Virginia-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform and a major critic of foster care, said that New York had basically adopted "a de facto confiscation-at-birth policy."

"What this policy is really saying, to the worker, the supervisor and even the borough commissioner, is, 'Go ahead and leave that child in the home if you want, but if anything goes wrong, your career is over,' " Mr. Wexler said.

For the authorities to remove a child from a home for any significant period of time, they must have an order from a family court judge. Child-welfare officials in New York have long held that a court order for the removal of a single child from a home includes the right to monitor the safety of any new children born into that family. The degree of aggressiveness in how the city pursues that jurisdiction, however, has varied widely over time.

Mr. Mattingly said he had seen a need to tighten the protocols for dealing with such families after reviewing child deaths and seeing too many situations like the one involving Pablo Paez. He declined to state which cases in particular had worried him, but it was clear from his City Council testimony that Pablo's case bothered him deeply.

Officials said that caseworkers had been monitoring the home of Kiana Paez carefully since her first child's placement in foster care, and that her drug screening tests had all come back negative, leading them to believe she was becoming more responsible.

But the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, has said that as a result of abuse at her hands, Pablo had severe brain injury and fractures, including broken ribs and a broken leg.

Bill de Blasio, the chairman of the City Council's General Welfare Committee, praised the new regulations, saying they were "desperately needed." But some parent advocates worried that the aggressive approach might cross a civil rights boundary.

"The extraordinary circumstances language is troubling," said Michael Arsham, executive director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project. "There has to be a reason beyond simply their history. There has to be a new allegation. There has to be an immediate and pressing concern."

Bill Baccaglini, executive director of New York Foundling, one of several dozen foster-care agencies that will help administer the new policy, said he was "willing to be the subject of a little criticism from the civil libertarians."

"This comes out of the best of intentions," he said. "Being on this side of the business I know if we make a mistake you could lose a life."

I don't think this policy is too aggressive

2008-10-13T06:06:00.001-07:00

Saving Babies from Bad Parents
New York Post, May 16, 2008.

Credit where it is due: Administration for Children's Services head John Mattingly seems to get it.

At a City Council hearing this week, Mattingly announced a new ACS policy giving the agency increased latitude to remove a newborn from a parent if another child in the home had previously been removed for safety reasons.

Under the new system, if one child has been removed and the mother becomes pregnant again, the family's ACS caseworker must immediately attempt to determine whether the new baby will be in any danger.

The default presumption will require removal when the child is born, unless a borough supervisor determines that the baby will be safe.

Absent assurances otherwise, ACS will petition a court right away to gain custody of the child.

Such petitions aren't granted lightly - nor should they be.

But where the courts have already compromised parental rights for cause, the burden to prove that a new baby will be safe should be on the parent.

That's just common sense.

While this new policy is seen as "aggressive" by many advocacy groups, what's really amazing is that it wasn't put into effect a very long time ago.

Had it been, it's likely that 11-week-old Pablo Paez of Queens might not have been beaten to death - allegedly by his mother - last month.

Police say Kiana Paez, Pablo's drug-addicted mom, murdered her son only six months after ACS had placed his sibling in foster care because Paez was incapable of caring for the child.

According to ACS, the new policy was under discussion prior to Pablo's death.

As many as 200 babies a year are born into families with other children already in foster care.

They, at least, will have a greater chance at survival than did Pablo Paez.

Good for ACS for recognizing that.

However belatedly.

Young people abused while in NY foster care

2008-10-13T06:05:00.001-07:00

Fury at foster 'abuse;' Parents fume over ACS kids' injuries
Montero, Douglas. New York Post, May 19, 2008.

Sandra Allen first wants to get her son back from the city - then she'll sue.

Allen is part of growing army of irate parents whose kids were abused or injured while in the custody of the Administration for Children's Services.

Allen, who works for the city's Department of Finance, said she learned in early 2007 that her son Stephen Jr., 6, had a fractured skull and broken collarbone when she started getting X-ray bills from her employee medical insurance.

"We still don't know what happened to his head - we need to know," said the teary Queens mom.

Allen still doesn't know who beat up Stephen, and she is forbidden by MercyFirst, the Queens foster-care provider contracted by ACS to take care of him, from questioning him during supervised visits.

"They [ACS] make the Police Department's blue wall of silence look like cheesecloth," said Joseph Kasper, Allen's lawyer.

The "standard practice" requires the foster-care provider to inform birth parents of injuries or abuse "as soon as possible," an ACS spokesman said.

Tell that to Raven Hamlett, whose two sons, then 5 and 2, were sexually abused sometime between February 2004 and June 2006 when she voluntarily put them in foster care to kick a drug habit.

After getting them back, she sought their medical records from ACS because the oldest boy was acting out.

The ACS social workers accidentally "turned over documents saying these kids had been sexually abused" by an unknown man who attacked them in the Bronx foster-care agency caring for them, her lawyer David Lesch said.

"It's a nightmare - I have never seen anything so heinous," said Lesch, who filed a lawsuit last year.

There are 211 pending personalinjury lawsuits against ACS, some dating back to 2003, according to Law Department records.

The city has shelled out $1.8 million to resolve 15 personal-injury cases, including a $1 million payout last year to Antonia Phillips, now 6, who suffered permanent brain damage after being shaken in 2003 by an unknown assailant.

ACS refused to say if any workers or foster-care contractors were arrested or disciplined for the attack.

Phillips' lawyer Derek Sells calls the lack of prosecution "perplexing."

Between July 2006 and June 2007, there were 1,337 complaints that children in ACS care were abused or neglected, and 301 - nearly a quarter of the cases - were substantiated.

Both numbers were up from the previous 12 months where 197 of 1,256 complaints were substantiated. MercyFirst refused to comment.

Sandra Allen learned that 6-year-old son Stephen was injured in city foster care - only after getting his X-ray bills.

Two NY theater programs for at-risk youth

2008-10-13T06:02:00.001-07:00

New voices: Teen playwrights command the stage
Hoffman, Barbara. New York Post, May 31, 2008.

WRITE what you know. And if you're a teenager in one of this city's underserved schools, you probably know a lot - about peer pressure, longing, homelessness . . . and hope.

It helps to put those things in writing. And if you're lucky, you might just see the world you've created enacted on a New York stage.

That's what's happening this week via two different programs. Manhattan Theatre Club's Write on the Edge Festival Monday at City Center (131 W. 55th St., 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; call [212] 399-3000, ext. 4252 for free tickets) presents short plays written by at-risk kids, performed by professional actors.

Fidelity FutureStage goes even further - with students not only writing plays, but acting, directing and stage-managing them. Eight months of workshops and theater trips culminate in performances this week before family, friends and the occasional producer at off-Broadway's New World Stages.

"A lot of the kids say they've now found a passion - something that's meaningful and they love doing," says Alice Krieger, one of the directors of Leap (Learning Through an Expanded Arts Program), which works with FutureStage.

"We had a senior last year who was homeless and living in a shelter - he's now in a theater company up at Cornell."

Here's a look at several teens, the playwrights of tomorrow.

TAIWO ELLIS, 14
Aspiring director, playwright, actor (in Erica's play)

"My play last year, 'Ice Joey,' was about a boy who moves to Phoenix and has trouble fitting in, so he tells everybody that he's a rapper named Ice Cube. Erica played Joey's mom.

"The best part is the first rehearsal. When people laugh at a joke, it feels good. And it's fun to direct, because the ideas you have in your head, you can see performed in front of you, and if you don't like it, you can tweak it.

"I like being backstage. How they say a line, where they say the line - you have more of a say in what goes on."

ERICA GAYLE, 14
Aspiring actress, playwright

"I write from what I see and what I hear from my friends. It shows in my play, 'Just B Urself, I Can B That 2.' It's about a boy who falls in love with someone and tries to change his personality . . . It's based on people in my school. I changed the names - some.

"Editing's hard. You fall in love with a line and you have to take it out, because it doesn't work. Makes you want to cry, losing a line.

"[Getting the play produced] made me feel proud. Now people in my school know my name. After high school, I want to go to California, because that's where the stars are. The writing thing is cool, but I like to act."

NICHOLAS MUNIZ, 18
Playwright

"My play 'Street Walker' is about a 20-year-old boy who lost his family and everything he knew, loved and cherished in a fire. In some ways, it's a little like real life. I was taken away from my mother when I was 4 or 5 and put into foster care. I went to five families, none friendly or nice.

"My mom wanted me back. She'd ride her bike to my karate school, look at me and ride away. At 12, I went back to her. Now we're like best friends. She was ecstatic [about the play] because she knew there was something special in me . . .

"Writing a play is a big thing. I stopped a few times. The only thing that kept me going was my English teacher, Mr. Evans. He told me, 'Nick, you have a wild imagination. Put it in the play.' "

REBEKAH PORTER, 17
Understudy, playwright

"I wrote a play, 'Are You Having Sex?,' about a mother who finds a condom in her 16-year-old daughter's room . . . I just tried to imagine what would happen if my mother found one in my room.

"There were only two curses in it: damn and hell. My mother said, 'Try to use other words,' but she was proud of me.

"I start things and I drop things, so she was glad to see me finish something, finally. I rewrote the ending Sunday - I still keep trying to make it better."

Quick move from group homes to foster care lacks sufficient pool of NY foster parents

2008-10-13T06:01:00.001-07:00

Older Children, Bigger Hurdles
Foderaro, Lisa. New York Times, June 8, 2008.

Eight months into New York City's bold experiment of moving hundreds of troubled teenagers out of group homes and into foster care, the system is stretched so thin that many involved say they are having trouble making thoughtful matches between foster parents and their charges. Some child-welfare experts are worried they may soon be unable to recruit enough qualified foster parents, while others say the city has moved too slowly in putting support systems in place to help these older children flourish in private homes.

"It's a good direction, but the problem is that we're implementing the plan before the infrastructures are all in place," said Bill Baccaglini, executive director of the New York Foundling, one of the largest of about three dozen private foster care agencies that contract with the city to find and monitor homes. "We run the risk of burning out our foster parents and losing them."

Stephen McCall, a consultant who runs a support group for foster parents, said he fielded a frantic call in May from a New York City police officer he had helped persuade to foster her 19-year-old godson. She suspected he was smoking marijuana with friends in her home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "She said, 'I don't know if I can do this,' " Mr. McCall said.

A 61-year-old psychotherapist said that a year ago, after raising four children of her own, she welcomed a 17-year-old boy into her home on the Upper West Side with the intention of adopting him. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because she wanted to shield her private life from her clients and protect the boy, she said that the teenager had been physically abused when he was younger, was "emotionally no older than 12 or 13" and consistently lied to her. He moved out in March.

Even Mary Chancie, an experienced adoptive parent who recruits foster parents on behalf of the nonprofit agency You Gotta Believe, lasted only six months with two teenage boys she took in. One, age 13, had a behavior disorder and went to live with a sister; the other, 19, was "disrespectful to family members in the house," Ms. Chancie said.

"He was a nice kid and we still have a relationship," she said. "But he had challenges I wasn't equipped to deal with at the time."

Robert H. Gutheil, executive director of Episcopal Social Services, another private foster care agency that contracts with New York City, said his organization usually has 10 to 15 foster families awaiting children, but "typically, in the best case, only one to three of those would be willing to take a teenager."

With the city's Administration for Children's Services having promised to move 700 to 1,100 children out of so-called residential care -- group homes and larger institutions -- and into foster homes by June 2009, that may not be enough.

"It's the right principle and policy, but principles and policies need to meet kids where they are on every single day," said James F. Purcell, executive director of the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, an umbrella organization that represents foster care agencies. "And we need to pay constant attention to that -- that we don't let a policy direction that says 'less residential' become the reality if, in fact, that's not what the kid needs."

New York -- which has long had a higher proportion of teenagers in institutional settings than other large cities, according to John B. Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services -- is among several places nationwide prioritizing a push toward private foster homes. National studies show that in general, children in private homes have fewer problems as adults than those in group homes.

As the total number of children in the city's care has dropped to 17,000 from 19,000 over the past four years, the proportion in institutions has also dipped, to 15 percent from 19 percent, according to figures provided by the children's services agency. The average age of the foster care population is 10 1/2, while those in institutional care average 16. Children in New York State can remain in foster care until age 21.

The city's most recent initiative to reduce the current institutional population of about 2,500 to as few as 1,500 comes on top of similar efforts. In 2005, the city finished closing its own 250-bed network of group homes. And in 2004, Children's Village, a private nonprofit agency that contracts with the city and houses 280 children in cottages on a 150-acre campus in Westchester County, decided to redouble its efforts to find homes for teenage residents rather than maintain its longstanding practice of keeping them until they turn 21.

Mr. Mattingly said the key is to place teenagers in private homes immediately on being removed from their families, because otherwise they often languish forgotten in institutions.

"The basic experience we have in the field, and research supports this, is that if you work at it, you can place teens at the very get-go in foster families," Mr. Mattingly said. "Those foster families sometimes will need additional supports, not always, and the young people will do better and achieve permanency more quickly if placed at the outset with a family."

But the challenges of placing teenagers only grow more complicated as the numbers dwindle, since those left behind tend to have more physical, behavioral, emotional, psychological or learning problems. Some were badly abused and further traumatized by bouncing from foster home to foster home.

"Good, solid, healthy teens have issues in the best of families," said Mr. Gutheil, of Episcopal Social Services. "But these are not run-of-the-mill, 'I'm in a bad mood today' adolescents. These are kids who have gone through some pretty rugged times. The notion that an adult is somehow going to take control of their lives is very difficult for them."

To address these issues, the Administration for Children's Services has created nearly 1,000 so-called therapeutic foster homes, which come with extra counseling services, as well as crisis-management support and more training for parents. The city has also relaxed its rules regarding kinship placement, allowing a godparent, coach or family friend to take in a child.

And foster care agencies have begun to tailor their recruiting pitches at churches and street fairs to play up the benefits of fostering a teenager, including the freedom from diaper changes and sleep deprivation. Among the most effective tools has been including a panel of teenagers who need homes in the 10-week training of prospective parents: Mr. Mattingly said that while perhaps 7 percent start out willing to take in teenagers, by the end, 25 percent raise their hands.

"One lady called after attending a panel and talked about one young man who she said had an amazing self-deprecating humor," recalled Jeremy C. Kohomban, the president and chief executive officer of Children's Village. "She ended up taking him."

Andrew White, director of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School and editor of Child Welfare Watch, a policy journal, said that some of the planned reductions of children in residential care would be achieved through attrition, as young people age out of the system at 21.

The current challenges were foreshadowed by the experience of Children's Village, which found this year that over three years, only half of 69 charges age 13 to 20 settled successfully with families. The story of the other half is sprinkled in shorthand across an agency tracking spreadsheet. Angel, 18: "Severe Psych Issues. AWOL from Hosp & now incarcerated." David, 19: "Severe Psych issues: not ready." Claude, 16: "Goal to be changed."

"It's not that residential has no place in the continuum, but it can't be a permanent solution, and in the past it has become that," Dr. Kohomban said. "Organizationally, we have to be eternally optimistic that there's always a family. All of us look at these kids and say, 'There's a family for you.' When kids lose hope, they're impossible to treat."

Dr. Kohomban said that as hard as his staff tried, the cottages on his Dobbs Ferry campus, which house 12 to 14 boys each, could not replace the experience of a private home. "We take boys who have been arrested multiple times and get them into employment," he said. "But the one thing we can't do in residential care is we can't create family. The dynamics of family life have to be experienced -- the negotiating, the setting of limits, the good, the bad. I can't create the values of being a brother or a son or responsible boyfriend."

Richard Hucke, deputy director of foster home services for the Jewish Child Care Association, is one of many in the field who want the city to create more therapeutic foster homes, in which the parents also receive a much higher monthly payment, called a board fee, to help cover the expense of housing a foster child.

(According to the Administration for Children's Services, the board rate for a child 12 or older is $662.70 a month, compared with $486.30 for a child under 6, and the $901.50 annual clothing allowance for a foster child of 16 is about quadruple that for a 4-year-old. Those with special needs get a board rate of $1,065 to $1,614.60 a month.)

Mr. Hucke said that his agency, another contractor, is hamstrung because the city gives it only enough money for 96 therapeutic homes, though it has trained more parents to run such homes. "I have therapeutic homes that are sitting empty," he said.

In the meantime, his is one of many agencies that have become more aggressive and creative in recruiting new foster parents since the city's focus shifted to placing teenagers. It offers a finder's fee of $500 for each new household that current foster parents recruit, and is planning a cruise around Manhattan on Thursday to woo new foster parents and thank current ones.

On Friday morning, representatives of the Jewish Child Care Association set up a table brimming with brochures outside a mental health forum at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx in the hope of reaching out to potential parents with a grounding in some of the children's challenges.

"Those are professionals, and those are the people we really want to target," Mr. Hucke said.

Beverly Mills, a case manager for a city-run shelter for homeless families who stopped by, said she lives alone and has plenty of room. She said she would like to do her part to help disadvantaged young people, explaining that "sometimes when they're not raised correctly, they come out here and do bad things." But Ms. Mills, who has a 30-year-old son, drew a line at adolescents.

"I would take someone up to 11 or 12 because they're still impressionable," she said. "You can still grab them and guide them so they can go through school and go through college."

As a success story, Children's Village points to Juan Molina, 17, who in another time and place would have simply been called an orphan. After a decade of searching, Juan found a family in the form of Henry Greene, a 71-year-old retiree who had already adopted eight boys, most of them teenagers at the time, now successfully launched into the world. They began spending time together last fall, and Juan moved into Mr. Greene's apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx in March. Mr. Greene, Juan's foster father now, has started the process of adoption.

Juan was 7 when he was taken from his father, who he said was an alcoholic, and his mother, who was sick with cancer. After bouncing around among foster families, he landed in Children's Village at 11, though he said he ran away and lived with a friend in Brooklyn for a couple of years.

Until Mr. Greene entered his life, Juan had given up hope of being someone's son. "Ever since my mom passed away, I never thought I'd find a family," he said. Of Mr. Greene's decision to adopt him, he added: "It was awesome. He cares about me and talks to me like a father. I feel like I finally got this."

Abusive New York foster parents

2008-10-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

Foster parents blame 3-year-old Kyle Smith for his death
Shifrel, Scott. New York Daily News, July 1, 2008.

CORRECTION - A STORY in Tuesday's Daily News incorrectly referred to Nymeen Cheatham and Lemar Martin as the foster parents of Kyle Smith, 3. Cheatham was Kyle's guardian; Martin was her live-in boyfriend.

They actually blame little Kyle for his death.The fiendish foster parents charged in the slaying of 3-year-old Kyle Smith called the abused tyke "a troubled kid" who was "always hurting himself."

Court documents filed Tuesday at the arraignment of Nymeen Cheatham and boyfriend Lamar Martin reveal how savage and cold-hearted their alleged treatment of the boy was.

"He looked pale (and) I didn't know if he was playing a trick because he does that a lot," Cheatham, 31, told cops. "He put on more of a performance...I popped Kyle open hand because he was acting out."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Cheatham continued. - YES, YOU DID

Then she blamed the tiny victim: "Kyle is a troubled kid, he is difficult to handle and is always hurting himself, jumping from bed to bed and throwing himself on the ground."

Cheatham and Martin, 23, pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in the June 6 beating death in their Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment.

Cheatham, who had her own four children taken away in a Texas case, was taking care of the tot after his mother left town.

The statements revealed in court papers were made to cops in their living room and at the precinct house shortly after the battered and beaten child was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.In some instances - as when they repeatedly called Kyle a "troubled child" and admitted throwing cold water on him to make him behave - the statements were chillingly like those given by 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown's parents after she was killed about 15 blocks away in January 2006.

Others appeared to be self-serving and never admit to a fatal blow but they offer the first detailed look at Cheatham and Martin's side of what happened that horrible day.

The family had attended a cousin's funeral the day before and Kyle continued "acting out" when family and friends came over to their Patchen Ave. apartment afterward, the couple said.Cheatham "asked Kyle why he is putting on a show," she told cops. "He was very dramatic, falling out and crying."

That night, he was kicking the bars on his bed and she tried to "calm Kyle down" because Martin had to work in the morning. "I put Kyle in a time out and had him do push-ups," she said, also admitting to hitting him with a hairbrush. "When he was doing push-ups he banged his head a few times and he kept acting out."

"He was very pale. He didn't look right. I took him to the bathroom to run water over him because he didn't like water. I would run water through his hair to sooth him in the past."Martin also admitted that he "popped" the child that morning, made him stand in the corner, march in place and ordered him to do push-ups.

"I popped on his arms and told him to get in push-up position," he told cops. "When Kyle got down in push-up position he (acted) like he is going into another convulsion and started screaming, crying."

At the arraignment, Brooklyn Supreme Court Gustin Reichbach denied bail for both. He ordered the petite Cheatham, who held a Bible in her handcuffed hands and had a blank, puffy-eyed look, kept on suicide watch.

One year for every life she ruined is not enough

2008-10-13T05:58:00.001-07:00

Foster-ma caged: Abuser get 11 years in $1.6M fraud
Fermino, Jennifer. New York Post, Jul y 16, 2008.

She got one year for every young life she ruined.

A federal judge yesterday sentenced a woman to almost 11 years in prison for crafting a "diabolical scheme" in which she abused 11 special-needs kids she adopted to bilk New York state out of $1.6 million.

Citing the severity of the crimes and the need to deter others, Manhattan federal Judge Richard Berman ignored a plea agreement which would have given Judith Leekin a maximum of eight years on mail- and wire-fraud charges.

"He allowed the children to be heard," said Howard Talenfeld, a lawyer for the victims.

Other criminal charges against Leekin, 63, are still pending in Florida, where she took the kids from New York. If convicted there, she faces another 120 years behind bars.

Many of the victims are now adults and suffer from serious handicaps, including one who is mentally disabled and went blind after he was allegedly allowed to look into the sun with a magnifying glass.

"They will never have that opportunity to have a family. Who is going to take care of them?" Talenfeld asked the judge. "There are folks that would have adopted these children and stayed with them for life."

In court yesterday and in letters to the judge, he detailed the harsh treatment the victims received for two decades.

They were tied to their cribs, burned on a stove and beaten with an iron, the lawyers allege.

None was educated or received proper medical attention, he said.

Authorities are also searching for one child who disappeared under Leekin's watch.

Leekin's lawyer, Diamond Litty, begged the judge to stick to the plea agreement.

"Many allegations are uncorroborated . . . We have depositions of the children who miss their mother, who love their mother," she said.

The US Attorney's Office also asked the judge to stick to the more lenient agreement, but Berman would not be swayed.

The judge also ordered her to pay back the $1.6 million in subsidies she got from New York for adopting the kids.

Fake adoptions and embezzling subsidy

2008-10-13T05:57:00.001-07:00

ACS insiders' $1M 'phantom-tot bilk' fake adoption busts
Cornell, Kati, Jennifer Fermino and Stephanie Cohen. New York Post, July 17, 2008.

Two top ACS officials were among four people charged yesterday in a million-dollar scheme to rip off the city's child- protection agency by funneling cash through fake adoptions of kids who didn't exist.

The Administration for Children's Services duo allegedly spent the last three years setting up the phantom adoptions and cutting checks for nonexistent computer services.

Calling the case a "weighty and tragic situation," Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn called for a major overhaul of a system that allowed the scam.

She accused Nigel Osarenkhoe, supervisor of adoptions at the ACS payment services unit, and a second agency official, Lethem Duncan, of using the "great river of public money that flows through ACS" as a personal piggy bank.

In a disturbing twist, Hearn said investigators learned of the embezzlement scam during a year-long probe of the agency launched in response to the case of Judith Leekin, a Florida foster mother who allegedly abused 11 New York City kids in her care. Osarenkhoe was the ACS point person in that investigation.

The stolen cash was earmarked for orphaned, abandoned, and often abused kids, Hearn said.

A criminal complaint shows Osarenkhoe hatched the phony adoption plot at least as early as 2005, and recruited Duncan's help in finding people willing to pose as parents.

Osarenkhoe boasted to Duncan that "all he needs is a name, any name" to put in the ACS system in order to cut a check, US Attorney Michael Garcia said in announcing the charges of embezzlement, mail fraud and money laundering.

Stay Thompson, a foster-care worker with Concord Family Services in Brooklyn, snapped up the chance to become "foster mother" to a phantom child in exchange for a share of nearly $80,000 in checks, court papers charge.

At the same time, Duncan allegedly wrote a $375,000 check for computer equipment and services under a fabricated contract with Philbert Gorrick, owner of Contemporary Technologies Inc., which provided services to Concord.

Gorrick used his share to pay for a 2006 BMW, a 2006 Range Rover and $30,000 in rental payments at a doorman building, according to court papers.

The major break in the case came in March when a cooperating Duncan set up an additional, jaw-dropping $711,000 bogus transaction. The charges came one day after Leekin, 63, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for stealing more than $1.6 million from ACS, even as she tortured 11 disabled kids.

Stay Thompson (left) posed as a foster mom and ACS official Nigel Osarenkhoe, at court yesterday, made crooked payments in a scheme (flow chart) that netted another man this BMW, feds say.

1,708 cases of alleged abuse of NY foster children by caretakers

2008-10-13T05:56:00.001-07:00

Abuse up for ACS children
Montero, Douglas. New York Post, July 21, 2008.

Reports of abuse and neglect of children in city care grew by 12 percent last year, as parents, advocates and investigators keep closer watch on the municipal government's long-troubled child-welfare system.

The number of abuse complaints against foster parents and others asked by the Administration for Children's Services to look after troubled youngsters grew to 1,708 in the 2007 fiscal year, up from 1,525 in 2006, city records show.

In one such case, Judith Leekin, 63, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last week for taking more than $1.6 million from ACS even as she abused 11 disabled kids left in her care when she lived in Queens.

Abuse complaints involving foster parents and other caretakers are investigated by the ACS Office of Special Investigations, an internal affairs unit that was revamped two years ago.

Some 362 of the abuse cases reported in 2007 were substantiated by ACS investigators, meaning that there was enough evidence to take corrective action or forward information about the cases to district attorneys' offices for prosecution, city records show.

Last year's tally of abuse cases showed that 11 kids in city care were sexually abused, 66 were beaten and one endured psychological abuse.

ACS officials say they have a tough job dealing with abuse by people hired to care for children, and note that with 8,000 foster parents in the city caring for 17,000 kids, the rate of substantiated cases is tiny.

Andrew White, who runs the watchdog group Child Welfare Watch, said the rise in abuse complaints is due to the retooling of the Office of Special Investigations, including the hiring of 60 former law-enforcement officers.

"It shows a higher sense of caution and a more rigorous and intense approach to investigating," he said.

But another advocate says greater vigilance by parents angry that their children were unjustly taken has sparked the rise in abuse complaints against ACS.

"Parents have become more outspoken about the abuse of their children. People are fighting back," said Rolando Bini, who heads Parents in Action, a grass-roots group.

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Latest figures reveal a growing problem for the city's Administration for Children's Services
Child-care complaints in fiscal year

2006
Total 1,525
Substantiated 173, or 17%

2007
Total 1,708
Substantiated 362, or 23%

Employee steals from adoption subsidy program

2008-10-13T05:55:00.001-07:00

Ex-Official Pleads Guilty In Fraud at Welfare Agency
Weiser, Benjamin New York Times, Aug 1, 2008.

A former official of New York City's child welfare agency pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges including embezzlement, fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors have said he took part in schemes to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for the care of children with disabilities or special needs.

The official, Lethem Duncan, 62, participated in one scheme in which prosecutors have said that another Administration for Children's Services employee manipulated the agency's computers to create phantom adoptions and issue checks as if they were subsidies being paid for real adoptions.

In another scheme, Mr. Duncan, who officials have said was the deputy director of the payments-services department, arranged to have the agency issue checks to a private contractor for fictitious services, and received kickbacks in return.

"I agreed with other persons to embezzle money from A.C.S.," Mr. Duncan said in United States District Court in Manhattan as he addressed the first of six counts to which he pleaded guilty.

The judge, John G. Koeltl, asked Mr. Duncan, "Did you know that what you were doing was wrong and illegal?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Mr. Duncan replied.

The fraud charges involving Mr. Duncan and others were first made public about two weeks ago by the United States attorney's office in Manhattan and the city's Department of Investigation.

That announcement came a day after the sentencing of Judith Leekin, who was convicted of fraud after she adopted 11 children under four aliases and collected $1.68 million in payments meant for their care, which she used to support a lavish lifestyle. She received a prison term of nearly 11 years.

The two fraud cases have focused a harsh spotlight on the lack of internal financial controls at Children's Services. When the scheme involving Mr. Duncan was disclosed last month, Rose Gill Hearn, the Department of Investigation commissioner, said that Mr. Duncan "had the power to authorize A.C.S. payments and checks -- so he did, for himself and his co-conspirators, and it was easy, too easy."

John B. Mattingly, the Children's Services commissioner, said at the time that his agency would investigate to "discover how our internal controls and fiscal accountability systems were violated," and what could be done "to prevent this malfeasance from reoccurring."

An agency spokeswoman referred a reporter for comment to the Investigation Department on Thursday night. There, Ms. Gill Hearn said: "This guilty plea was a substantial step forward in this case. We're glad that this investigation has ended this individual's corruption in his former city position."

In the phony-adoption scheme, Mr. Duncan also worked with an employee of a Brooklyn foster care agency, Concord Family Services, the authorities have said. They said that the employee, Stay Thompson, Concord's fiscal director, received about $79,000 in illegal payments and agreed to share the proceeds with Mr. Duncan and the other A.C.S. employee, Nigel Osarenkhoe.

Mr. Mattingly, the commissioner, has said that the city has halted the placement of children with Concord.

In the other scheme, the authorities said, Mr. Duncan had his agency issue a check for $375,000 to a computer-services firm run by an acquaintance of Ms. Thompson's, which they said had done no work to earn the money.

The head of that firm, which had offices at Concord, then split the money with Mr. Duncan and Ms. Thompson, prosecutors said. Mr. Duncan, they said, received more than $100,000 that way.

Court records unsealed last month indicated that Mr. Duncan has been cooperating with the authorities in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence.

In court on Thursday, Daniel L. Stein, a prosecutor, said that the evidence included recordings of conversations between Mr. Duncan and his conspirators in the case.

The judge told Mr. Duncan that he could face up to 75 years in prison on the charges. Mr. Duncan, who is free on bond pending his sentencing, had no comment as he left the courtroom.

His lawyer, Steven K. Frankel, said Mr. Duncan had retired from the Children's Services agency.

Mr. Frankel added, "A.C.S. should look closely at their internal safeguards, which are literally nonexistent, particularly within the adoption subsidy program." He said that the activities the investigation uncovered "could never have happened if there were any kind of reasonable safeguards in place."

Empowering Youth Day at Oneida County Courthouse

2008-10-12T08:50:00.001-07:00

Foster children prep for independence
Morrison, Angelica. Utica Observer Dispatch, Sept. 8, 2008.

About 50 area foster children who were preparing to live on their own got information about jobs and area services Monday afternoon during the Empowering Youth Day: Life After Foster Care at the Oneida County Courthouse.

The event — which took place through the efforts of Oneida County Family Court, Oneida County Department of Social Services and the Office of Court Improvement — featured workshops and vendors.

“We’re trying to encourage our foster care kids to take ownership of their own lives and to be an active participant in developing their own career goals,” said Julia Brouillette, court attorney referee.

None of the foster children could comment due to privacy concerns.

Vendors included the Oneida County Workforce Development, the Peacemaker Program Inc., Planned Parenthood, Carpenters Local 747, Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 112 and the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers Local 195.

“It’s a trade you can take with you anywhere,” said Fran Hardy, council representative for the Local 747. “The thing about carpentry is at the end of the day, you feel like you’ve accomplished something.”

Next Generation Center for Youth

2008-10-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Press Release: Children's Aid to Dedicate New Next Generation Center in the Bronx; New One-of-a-Kind Center Designed By and For Youth Members to Serve Teens Leaving Foster Care and Other Disconnected Youth, April 28, 2008

NEW YORK – On May 6th, The Children’s Aid Society will formally open its new Next Generation Center in the South Bronx, a state-of-the-art facility designed to serve teens leaving foster care and other disconnected youth.

Designed by and for the youth themselves, the Next Generation Center symbolizes Children’s Aid’s new approach to serving vulnerable youth ages 14 – 24 who are leaving, or have left, foster care; or who are neither in school nor working and lacking the basic skills, education and social support systems to make a successful transition into adulthood. The Center also serves community youth.

“By placing all the services and all the experts that these youth need in one beautiful center that was designed by the teens,” said C. Warren Moses, CEO of The Children’s Aid Society, “we have a youth-driven, one-stop shop with all the programs and supportive services together in one very welcoming environment.”

History of the Next Generation Center
Mayor Bloomberg’s commission on economic opportunity estimated in 2006 that over 200,000 young people in New York City are disconnected, that is, neither in school nor working and lacking basic skills. Concerned about the dearth of services for these youth in the Bronx and in New York City as a whole, Children’s Aid wanted to fill the void. In the summer of 2005, Children’s Aid convened a panel of youth to identify what support teens need and how to best make those available.

In response, Children’s Aid developed an array of services, all grounded in youth development principles and focused on personal responsibility, educational achievement, creative self-expression and youth empowerment. Staffed by a team of top professionals, the center welcomes older youth by day who are disconnected with education and employment, and by evening youth in school who desire the center’s youth-driven services and community.

Youth in the earlier, temporary Next Generation facilities consulted with the architects of the permanent center to guide them in designing the new space. The 10,000 square-foot facility includes large teaching classrooms, computer lab, sound studio, teaching kitchen, fitness room and an entrepreneurial café. Art classes, workshops in digital photography and in the culinary arts occur simultaneously with financial literacy classes, tutoring, legal services and housing assistance.

“We’ve also invested in a new electronic case management and tracking system so that we can monitor our members’ progress and create enhanced workshops to meet their evolving needs,” said Lynne Echenberg, Esq., the Next Generation Center’s director. “We’re looking forward to serving many more youth in our new center.”

The Children’s Aid Society’s Next Generation Center is located at 1522 Southern Boulevard (at 172nd St.), Bronx, NY 10460, 718-589-4441. Subway: 2 to 174th Street. Walk along Southern Boulevard to center at corner of 172nd Street. Visitors can take the 5 train to 149th Street-Grand Concourse and change there for the 2, which always stops at 174th Street.

Contact:
Ellen Lubell, (o) 212-949-4938, (c) 917-854-6864, ellenl@childrensaidsociety.org
Emily Crossan, (o) 917-286-1548, (c) 201-344-5742, emilyc@childrensaidsociety.org

Lynn Echenberg

2008-10-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

NYer Of The Week: Bronx Woman’s Center Supports Troubled Youth
Khan, Shazia. NY1, Sept. 22, 2008.

More than 700 young people depend on the Next Generation Center in Morrisania, Bronx as a place to turn to instead of the streets.

Director Lynne Echenberg said she knows firsthand what kind of support they need.

“I represented young people in foster care and became painfully aware of the lack of supportive services for young people involved in various systems like foster care and juvenile justice,” said Echenberg.

The center opened three years ago, offering tutoring, jobs, housing assistance and medical services free of charge to young people from 14 to 24.

Echenberg said this is the first time many of her clients have had this type of support.

“Because they have had these unstable childhoods, they haven't had the privilege and good fortune of having someone talk to them about how to develop marketable skills and make sure that they're staying in school,” said Echenberg.

Shawnee Washington said before she started coming to the center two years ago she used to get into trouble and wasn't going to school. Now she says she's changed for the better.

“Since I have been with them I have changed a lot. My grades in school went up,” said Washington.

Shawnee and the others who come to the center are called “members.” They don't just attend the classes and programs, but design them based on their own needs.

“This is not rocket science. These kids just need somewhere to go in order to keep them out of the court system, in order to keep them off the street,” said the center’s technical director Karon Porter. “In order to engage them in something positive so they can move on and lead a happy and healthy life.”

Echenberg said many come right out of foster care and jail and can get involved in drugs and violence. She hopes for a different outcome with the Next Generation Center.

“My hope is that young people can come here, take risks, learn new skills, have a great time, meet new friends and find caring, compassionate adults who will be there for them," said Echenberg.

Mark Grate, a member, says Echenberg would do anything for the center and its members.

“Her head could get chopped off and she wouldn't even care,” said Echenberg, “because it’s like, 'I am not going to put myself before you guys or before this center.'”

So for giving members a place to go where they can find the support they need, Lynne Echenberg is our New Yorker of the Week.

New York Resources for Youth

2008-10-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Struggles Of Forgotten Youth
Hampton, Matt. Queens Chronicle, Aug. 21, 2008.

Jamel Robinson is a 20 year old black man. He has spent most of his youth in foster care, shuttled between group homes and living with his own grandmother. He has spent nearly a year incarcerated for arrests which occurred while he was driving stolen cars. Next month, he’ll be jettisoned from New York City’s child welfare system with no prospects, and no idea where he’ll end up.

His story is by no means unique, and while not every child spends time in jail, many young people, both inside and out of the foster care system, struggle to find direction — ending up hopelessly lost, even to their own families. A recent New York Times article, citing a study by the Urban Institute, issued an alarming statistic: by the time they reach their mid-30s, roughly 60 percent of black men had spent time in prison.

There is a disconnect somewhere in society. A circuit is broken, and perhaps has been for a long time. But for young men like Robinson, who have the desire to stand up and fight for a brighter future for themselves and others — that circuit stands a chance to be whole again.

Crying Out
“All I know is foster care, and I depended on this system to take care of me. It failed.”

Robinson has testified before the New York City Council on the failings of the city’s child welfare system. He knows it all too well.

He was placed in foster care at the age of two months, in November 1987. He was born to a drug-addicted mother who was also an alcoholic. He still bears the physical and emotional damage of his mother’s addictions, suffering from cerebral palsy and a battery of learning disabilities, including ADHD.

When he was in high school, he fought for himself to get into special education classes, and was rebuffed often, told that everything from individual tutoring to group classes were filled. Failing to make any headway in the college preparatory classes where he was placed, he dropped out of high school, admitting that he “walked out of the building and never went back.”

Robinson’s problems worsened once he left school. Responsible only to his grandmother, he would stay out nights, disappear for hours at a time and often end up alone, sleeping on the street or in train cars. He says that when he was arrested the first time — for being in possession of a stolen vehicle — he almost felt a sense of relief that someone was finally paying him some degree of attention.

“I was crying out for help and I went unheard. There were nights I went hungry,” he said. “When I was in jail, I knew that I didn’t have to deal with the struggle of a dysfunctional household while I was serving time.”

For Robinson, every act of desperation, from finding his way into abandoned subway trains, to joyriding in stolen cars, was a plea for help from a city that was ignoring him.

“I felt like I didn’t have a voice, I just felt like I couldn’t get one,” he said. “So I thought, I’m going to do everything I can to get attention.”

Sugar Wright, of the southeast Queens group Keep Our Streets Safe, has known Robinson since he was 15. She considers him to be a strong advocate for change, because he knows better than most what can happen to a child who slips through the cracks.

“He’s been in the system,” she said. “For us, we sit outside it, so we really don’t know what’s going on. He would be the only one who actually knows it.”

Wright said that she considers Robinson to be a bit of a rarity among young people who have seen the hard times that he has in so few years.

Now, at age 20, with his discharge from public care looming, Robinson has had a revelation.

“I just want to increase the awareness of the multiplicity of problems of children in foster care and in the criminal justice system,” he said. “What happens is that most of these children go unheard and unsupported. For me, the struggle was too much to deal with.”

Finding Answers In Others
Mackenzie Brooks is a St. Albans artist. In 2006, she started From Cardboard To Canvas, an organization that reaches out to children from around her neighborhood, and gathers them together to sit and paint.

It’s a simple operation. Just paints and supplies, but Brooks said the group has been a vital component in the lives of roughly 20 kids, from the ages of 7 to 19, who don’t have a place to go on weekends.

“Not all kids want to do basketball, or do karate, some of the kids, like me, just really want to draw,” she said.

Without her group, a number of the young people she helps would be left to their own devices, and while the art supplies are a big expense, Brooks considers it a public service.

In southeast Queens, organizations like From Cardboard To Canvas spring up all the time out of sheer necessity. Brooks said she believes that when young people are given the opportunity, they will always turn their backs from a life lived on the dark side of the street. The problem is that authority figures — everyone from parents and teachers to clergy — don’t always have the energy to keep up, or they lose interest.

“You’d be amazed to see,” she said. “It’s awesome how young people can learn if we don’t give up on them. It makes me feel good when a child can figure out the artistic process, it makes me feel that I’m doing something important in the community.”

A group that started as just five children has more than doubled in size over the last year and a half, becoming as big as Brooks can manage.

Down Merrick Boulevard, at I.S. 8 in Jamaica, Calvin Whitfield and the group Ella’s Place take a different tactic to get the same results.

Whitfield had a strong belief that subtle guidance and lending an ear would make all the difference in a child’s life, and he used Ella’s Place to test his theory.

A kind of independent pilot program which started in February, Ella’s Place is a group connected to at-risk and troubled youth through the court system and gives them a place to have open discussion with mentors and youth their own age.

Shakeria Little, 16, and Bernard Harrison, 17, were referred to Ella’s Place by their probation officers. Both were guided to the program because they had gotten into altercations with other people their own age, which had resulted in criminal charges being filed.

Now, instead of becoming a casualty of the juvenile justice system, Little and Harrison have turned around their attitudes, and their lives. The two spent six months in the program, which has seemingly made a world of difference.

“There’s a lot more self control in our behavior now,” Little said. “We’ve learned to be optimistic. We talk about what we want to do when (we) grow up, and that’s not stuff we really thought about before.”

Harrison, who said he found a great deal of use out of conflict resolution workshops, agreed. “This is the kind of program that helps you look inside yourself, and find your passion. They help you and they give you guidelines.”

Whitfield, who runs the program along with coaching football at Jamaica High School, said that they rely on input from the young people themselves to dictate how their workshops go.

“We engage in a lot of role-playing,” he said. “We might put them in a situation to look at their options.”

In addition to the workshops, the group takes time to open up mentorship opportunities to put the youth in different environments, including field trips to Manhattan —all tailored to follow the interests of the young people involved.

As with From Cardboard To Canvass, in many ways, the money that comes in facilitates the content. Art supplies and theater tickets aren’t free, even for charitable organizations, and Whitfield said that by far the biggest struggle is finding the funds to maintain the program, even when less than a dozen young people are regular attendees.

Whitfield feels vindicated by the first six months of the program, secure in the belief that the act of letting young people engage in a simple dialogue has improved their quality of life exponentially.

“Our goal is to give every kid an opportunity to be supported,” Whitfield said. “We all have social problems. We just said we would do whatever we can do to help them achieve.”

For all this work, Little said that it’s easy to tell which young people are getting the most out of the program. “You can notice who’s really into it with the attendance. Some people, if they just come a couple of times, they’re not getting it.”

Those that don’t show up, of course, are added to the growing number of young people who slip through the cracks. The kind of young people that Robinson is trying to convince to stay motivated in their own lives.

Inciting Change
On Oct. 6, Robinson is holding a press conference to introduce what he calls the Jamel Robinson Child Welfare Reform Initiative, the first stage in what he hopes represents change for the programs which he believes have failed so many young people like himself across New York City.

Robinson named it after himself to highlight his own story, and to give others valuable context when it comes to looking at the way youth services are presented.

“It makes a powerful statement when you use a name, because behind that name is a story,” Robinson said. “This is about my peers, the ones who are still in foster care, and in the criminal justice system. Those systems are not interconnected, but there are solutions to these problems. We just have to put them together.”

Robinson has faith that through his example, people will be able to see the importance of reaching out to youth.

“I believe we need to change things,” Robinson said. “I believe real leaders incite change.”

Anyone wishing to donate to the programs listed in this article should e-mail Matt Hampton at matth@qchron.com